


The Stars that Listen

by fardareismai



Series: The Orphan of Arcadia Series [3]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, Labyrinth (1986), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Crossover, Crossover Pairing, F/M, Fae AU, Fully written, Multi, OT3, Updated weekly, character death- OR IS IT?, dark themes, emma/killian/azriel - Freeform, let's just pretend that the end of acomaf and acowar didn't happen, not sayin' who, orphan of arcadia au, slow to start
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-05-07 10:42:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 21
Words: 63,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19207723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: War is coming to Prythian and to save his world, Rhysand must call on a prophecy he only half-remembers in the person of a beast who looks like a beauty.Emma and Killian have traveled the world, eternal and deeply in love.  Now they are called back to Faerie and asked to give everything up to save a world that never loved them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My favorite person's [REDACTED] birthday is today, and because I love her best of all people, I've written her a Thing that is complicated and pretty and sexy and mad.
> 
> Things happen in this story that are not always happy, and some people might not like. I haven't tagged them yet because I don't want to spoil what happens, but I will fully tag when the whole story is up. If you think something might not suit your tastes, drop me a line on the Tumblr (asthewheelwills) or wait until the whole thing is up and check out the tags.
> 
> I'll be honest, I think this is one of the better things I've written in my career so far, so I'm super excited for it and I hope you love it, all of you!
> 
> But most of all, I hope WLG loves it and has a fabulous day with all the hugs and magic and sexy dark-haired immortal men her heart desires!

Killian Jones woke in the dark.

It was late. He could tell it was late by the weariness of his human body. It wasn't quite moondark though- those still, quiet hours when the moon is set and the sun hasn't quite risen. He knew because his bed was empty beside him, but his lady, his companion of the last hundred years and more, was standing at the porthole in this cabin, white gown lit nearly as bright as noonday by the setting moon.

"I wondered if I should wake you," she said quietly, knowing he was awake in that secret way of hers, though he'd moved nothing but his eyelids. "Or if I should just go and return as soon as I could."

"Go?" he asked, sitting up. From this new vantage he could see that the gown she was wearing was not her nightrail, but a wide-skirted silk affair, which rustled as she moved and was detailed in shimmering black like a swan. When she turned to look at him, a tiara of black diamonds glittered from her brow. "To Court," he said, understanding.

His ship was a pirate vessel and bowed to no king or queen among men. The only court that his lady would visit dressed so was a court in the uncanny halls of the Fey.

"The Lord of the Night Court has taken a wife," she said with a small shudder. The Night Court was a particularly ghastly place, as he knew from the time, long ago, that he had walked through her memories.

"And what claim has the Lord of Night on your presence?" Killian asked, swinging his feet over to sit on the edge of the bed and watch her.

The Lady shrugged. "Political, I'm afraid. The Underground doesn't get much attention from the High Fae in the overworld. An invitation to its Lady, particularly when that Lady is a creature usually ignored completely by the higher orders is as much a threat as an invitation. I have no desire for my lands to come to harm."

There had been a time, back when first he'd known her, when the theft of the Underground would not have concerned her in the slightest. When the Labyrinth had siphoned memory and the halls of the palace and the Goblin City had rung with silence. In the last century, however, the Underground had become a place of refuge for the outcast and unwanted from the human and fae realms. The Labyrinth had become a mirror of the Lady's own contentment, and had passed that contentment on to those who had wished themselves someplace safe. There was a small kingdom there now of goblins, changelings, piskies, sprites, and humans, all living together in harmony under the clever green gaze of the Lady of the Underground.

And when her consort found the endless, unchanging grey sky too oppressive to stand, they would away to the human world and their ship of dreams, leaving their citizens in the capable hands of their own Henry, grown now, with a wife of his own. They had chosen to return to the Underground of Henry's childhood and its ageless ages, though their daughter remained in the human world, living her life and having her adventures. If she chose the deathless lands someday, they would be hers, but for now, she was living in the world, and she only came by to visit her father and mother in their palace beyond the Goblin City, as well as the Lady of the Underground and her eternal human consort, who she called "grandmother" and "grandfather" though she now looked as old as they did.

The Underground was now a treasure the Lady would protect with all her not-inconsiderable power. Though Henry and his wife stood often in her stead as its Lord and Lady, it was the Orphan of Arcadia alone who would stand sentinel over them.

Even if it meant dipping her toe into the dangerous waters of the politics of the High Fae overworld.

"We shall have to go to the Palace first," Killian said, pushing himself up from the bed, and crossing to his wardrobe to pull on his boots. "I keep nothing suitable for the Seelie Courts on the Jolly Roger." Neither did she, but drawing items out of what seemed the ether was one of her many tricks.

He had not missed the fact that she had considered leaving him behind to face the dangers alone. He did not mention it, but he thought to leave her in no doubt of his thoughts on the matter.

She was hardly fooled. "I would not take you into that den of vipers, my love," she said, shaking her head. "The Hewn City is a deadly place in the best of days, when its Lord and Lady are installed? I can only imagine what horrors will witness."

"Have you considered that it's a trap?" Killian asked, his voice going sharp and accusing.

The Lady gave him a long look down her straight nose, her faerie green eyes lucent in the dark. "I am neither blind nor deaf, my love. I hear the drums of war descending into the Underground. The Lord of Night is old. The oldest of the current generation of High Lords." Old enough, she did not have to say, to remember the prophecy that had made her and given her power beyond even that of the High Fae. "He will wish to turn me to his side in whatever battle comes to the overworld. He  _would_  choose to fight with a monster."

"And you would choose to go alone into a known trap?"

"I would choose not to take the agent of my destruction into a known trap, yes!"

"Agent-" Killian began, offended.

" _You_ , Killian," she cried, and his name on her tongue had all the power it had ever had- it made him know her and want her and love her in great crashing waves. "If they so much as threatened you, I would give any power, the Underground, the world itself, not even for your life, but to spare you a moment's pain."

"Emma," Killian said, and as his name on her tongue washed away his anger and resentment, so her name on his scrubbed away her stubbornness.

She sighed and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, the silk of her skirt rustling, but taking on not a single wrinkle as she looked at him with hopeless resignation in her face.

"We cannot be as we are, my love," she said. "You must be nothing more to me than my human consort. A warm body for my bed. It is not so unheard-of for Low Fae to consort with humans, but to bond? To gift them eternal life?" she shook her head. "That is Old Magic, and forgotten by so many as to seem new. They would use it against us in a heartbeat."

"You would school me on obfuscation?" Killian asked, a laugh in his voice. "You who cannot speak untruth?"

The Lady glared up from the bed. "Trickery flows in my veins with the magic of my faerie blood," she said coolly. "You would do best to remember that, Human."

"Emma," Killian said gently, bending to take her hand and lift it to his lips. "I have known you lo these many years, and I know what you are, and you, my love, are an honest creature, no matter what blood flows in your veins."

The Lady sighed, for she knew truth when she heard it, not only when she spoke it.

"I remember enough of what I was born, and even the most honest faerie has more chance against the ranks of the High Fae than the most cunning human. You must do as I say- you must seem dull, witless, even enthralled to my power. They must notice you not at all, do you understand?"

"I am my Lady's to command," Killian said in a sweet, humble voice which was not at all like his own.

"You are not," she said, standing before him, looking into his eyes with love shining clear, "and I would not have you so. But if you will insist upon coming-"

"And I will."

"Then we must pretend," she concluded.

She set her hand in the center of his chest. Killian looked down to see that from it grew a wave of black which extended beyond her hand over his chest and shoulders and legs, transforming into a suit of black silk, detailed in swan white, the inverse of her own gown. On his head he felt the bare weight of a circlet he surmised was much like hers, and his hand was encased in a leather glove, hiding the fact that his left was a false hand. All this was accomplished in a moment and accompanied by the sweet smell of apple blossom and honey, and a quicksilver odor of ozone.

"Killian," the Lady said, her voice strange and fae with her use of magic. "Kiss your Emma now and know that she loves you more than life, for I shall not be as you know me for some time yet."

~?~?~?~?~

The Lady felt exposed. Obvious.

It was her own fault for choosing to wear her own swan white with only the barest nod to the sigil color of the Night Court. Her own foolish pride.

It had been the right choice, though, of that she was certain. The more these serpents focussed their hissing attention on her, the less they would notice her companion.

Though she had told herself it was wisdom, she knew she would never have left him behind.

"You look like a swan among crows," he whispered, and had she a heart, it would have warmed.

She had warned him to guard his tongue- no secrets must pass between them in these halls, for every shadow listened in the Court of Nightmares. But this, which sounded like an ordinary fawning compliment, but which she knew was so much more- this was why she could not have left him. Though it was dangerous, and though she might find herself guarding both his back and her own, he knew when she was afraid and had the words she needed to calm and remember herself.

The receiving line moved forward, and they stepped with it, regal as kings in the face of the sneers of the Night Court.

She would have stood out regardless, the Lady told herself as she and her beloved stood silent together. The fashions in the Hewn City tended toward dramatically exposed flesh- nothing the Lady would ever wear. So it had been a century and a half before when last she had entered the Court beneath the Mountain, and the fashions had only become more extreme since then. She would have been obvious for her reserve even had she chosen to dress in night black like the rest of the carrion birds.

At least the males still wore suits of black as they had before, though the cuts had changed subtly. The clothing she had given her beloved would blend seamlessly in among them.

The line moved again, and for the first time the Lady could see the High Lord and Lady.

He was just as she had expected from the rumors she knew of him. Beautiful as any creature in any world, his eyes were violet, his hair night-black, and his smile was cold as the space between the stars.

Her eyes cut to the man whose arm she held. Like the High Lord, his hair was black, his eyes vivid, but he lacked the uncanny stillness of the Fae. She liked the movement of him- the way his heart beat and his blood rushed and his hair grew. The Fae have little hair on their faces or bodies, but the Lady's companion had a neatly trimmed beard, and beneath his clothes he had hair covering nearly all of him, curling, dark, and coarse. She loved that about him- his hair, and his changing face, and his human foibles. She looked away from him quickly, back up to the royal dias before anyone could catch a whiff of the sentiment which could damn them both.

The High Lord's lady was a surprise. The Lady had expected a perfect specimen of High Fae beauty, perhaps with a spark of cleverness, for she had heard that the Lord of Night had elevated her to High Lady at his side, which was not usual. The reality was unexpected, however. The High Fae tended toward extremes with their looks, but the High Lady of the Night Court did not. Her hair was not blonde, nor black, nor brown, nor red, but a color that fell somewhere between blonde and brown. It was a color that The Lady had seen before, many and many a time, but not among the Fae. Likewise, Lady Night's eyes were not green, nor vivid blue, nor violet like her husband's, but a soft grey.

"She looks like a human," The Lady murmured.

"The High Lady?" her companion asked, frowning. "She looks Fae to me. Her hands… her ears…"

He wasn't wrong. Lady Night was tall and slim, as the High Fae always are, with long, narrow fingers and gracefully pointed ears. When she spoke, her canine teeth were slightly elongated, and her skin was flawlessly smooth as were all the High Fae.

The line moved again, and it seemed that the High Lady felt the power of the Lady's regard, for their eyes met across the ballroom for a single, terrifying instant.

The Lady of the Underground looked away first. It would not do to draw either ire or regard from the Lady of the Night at such an early juncture.

Her eyes fell instead on a creature standing at the edge of the dias. No High Fae he, the proud black wings rising above his shoulders put paid to that theory, though he looked otherwise like every other creature in the room. The Lady wondered at his place among these- was he a servant? No more than a guard? Or was he trusted, a member of the court?

Illyrian were a much higher order than her own species, but it was unusual for the High Fae to countenance any of the lower orders as anything even remotely resembling equal. Though The Lady had heard that the Kingdom of Night had an Illyrian army, one did not invite warriors to court. One did not become friends with weapons.

"High Lord Rhysand, Night Triumphant, and High Lady Feyre, Cursebreaker," a court attendant said importantly as The Lady and her companion reached the bottom of the dias.

It took no effort for The Lady to put ice into her veins as she looked up at the pair standing over her, lordly as kings. The High Fae were so proud- bandying their names about, forgetting the Old Magic that bound the lower orders.

But then, the High Fae had long since forgotten that there was still power in the Low Fae. The Lady could take those names, gifted so casually, and bring down the mountain atop them, leaving every other creature untouched, had she the desire.

Instead, she stepped forward and curtsied.

She did not bow deep, as though to her liege. She owed no fealty to these two creatures. Nor did she lower her eyes but kept them steadily on the High Lord and Lady before her, for she knew them for her enemy.

"You are very welcome here, Lady," the High Lord said, his voice low with a laugh behind it. "May we know your name?"

No, The Lady thought. Only three creatures in all of the realms had that, and the High Lord of the Night Court would not make four.

"I am called Lady Swan, of the Underground."

The name made the High Lord's eyes shine. As she had surmised, she'd been expected.

"I don't know the Underground," the High Lady said. "Where in Prythian are you found?"

Lady Swan turned her eyes to the High Lady's not-quite human ones.

"The lands of Prythian stretch beneath the sky, Lady Night. My lands, as their name suggests, lie below, far beneath these mountains. We are not part of Prythian and as such are subject neither to its treaties, nor participants in its wars."

Though The Lady did not take her eyes from the High Lady, her words were for the High Lord.  _I am no part of your petty squabbles. Leave me and my people out of it._

" _Your_  lands?" the High Lady asked. "You have no High Lord?"

The Lady gave her an icy smile. "No, my Lady. Nor any High Lady either, you remain the only one in all of Faerie. High Lords and Ladies are bred or mated, and only from among the High Fae. I came by my lands through baser means, for I am made of baser metal."

The High Lady opened her mouth as though to speak again- she was clever, Lady Night. Though her eyes were human-colored, she was ruthless Fae through-and-through. Her husband interrupted her before she could voice her thought.

"Will you introduce us to your companion?" he asked.

The Lady smiled at him, and when she spoke her voice was poisoned syrup.

"Come forward, Sweet, and let the High Lord and Lady see your pretty face."

Captain Hook stepped forward and bowed low to Lord and Lady Night, far lower than the Lady Swan had done.

As the companion of her life, he stood as Lord of the Underground at her side and as such he owed them no honor, but in this place, with enemies on all sides, it would not do to elevate him so.

When he stood again, shoulders back, spine straight, eyes steady, the High Lady blinked in surprise.

"But you're a human!"

"How fortunate the Court of Night is to have a High Lady blessed with such sharp perception," Lady Swan said.

For the first time, she saw a flash of temper in the High Lord's violet eyes, and he growled low in his chest like the beasts that the High Fae pretended so hard not to be.

The Lady was not cowed and did not flinch.

"If you have looked your fill, Lord and Lady Night, may I extend my congratulations on your union and have your leave to join your court in their festivities?"

Without waiting for their permission, she gave a short, sharp bow and, taking her companion's arm to steer him before her, turned away from the furious High Lord and the confused High Lady.

She knew it was dangerous to turn her back to the Lord of Night, particularly when he was in a temper, but she would not slink away like a frightened prey animal. So long as she kept herself between the danger and her beloved, she would face the peril.

The Illyrian guard stepped in their path, glaring down at her. He had heard every word.

"Step aside, Illyrian," The Lady said, her voice hard as cold iron and lethal as ash wood. "Was I not invited as part of your entertainment? Am I not here to allow the Court of Night to goggle at the monster? Would you stand in the way of your High Lord's plan?"

"Stand down, Cassian," the High Lord said from closer behind them than made Lady Swan entirely comfortable. "Let them pass."

The Lady clenched her fist, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her palm. How dare they bandy names about like that? How could they be so cavalier with such power?

If she brought down the mountain, she would kill this Illyrian too. Didn't they know the temptation they laid before her?

Still, the Lady swept off, toting her companion beside her. Before she had quite gotten far enough away not to catch it, she hear the High Lady's voice.

"Rhys, what did she mean by 'monster'? And… 'baser metal'?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the consideration of the academy, a second chapter with one of my favorite interactions of the entire story.  Our Emma knows how to make a first impression, after all.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

Rhysand needed to recalculate and quickly.

He knew the prophecy of the queen who could build or destroy either the Fae realm or the Human one. He had not thought of it in years, but when reminded, he had sent out a force of spies to find the creature who could be their salvation.

They had been to the Underground and had returned with tales of the Lady of that place: a gentle creature almost indistinguishable from the humans she had grown up among, as is the way of Changelings. The Lady in the palace had shown no great power, but when her subjects were interviewed it was clear that she had it. His spies had told him of a powerful but gentle and motherly female, and he had calculated the risk of bringing her to him.

Clearly he had calculated poorly. The female before him that night was not the dark-haired, motherly faerie he had expected, but an icy queen who had easily seen through his wiles and had no patience for his whims. She was a dangerous creature, more so than he had expected.

He had thought it would be easy to sway her to their side- he would explain to the sweet, biddable creature that the fate of Prythian and the human world held in the balance, and she would see clearly that his was the side of right.

He had smelled her companion though, and he smelled of no human that Rhysand had ever encountered. Nothing at all like Feyre had before her rebirth, nor her sisters, nor any other human in the town where they had lived.

Human he was, and obviously so, but different as well. Not from the human world he knew and had vowed to protect.

Somehow he thought that Lady Swan of the Underground might make a more complicated ally than he had anticipated.

Rhysand met Azriel's eyes over the crowd and gestured with a nod toward a retiring room off the side of the ballroom. Az would have to answer for the poor information of his spies, but at the moment, they needed to regroup immediately.

Feyre followed him out of the ballroom, as he had expected, and so, to his surprise, did Amren. He hadn't even realized she was watching and listening, but as soon as the door was closed, she smiled.

"I like your Lady of the Underground," she said. "I think she will make a fine ally. She reeks of power. And she's quite amusing. Her young man is a pleasure to look on as well."

"I didn't smell any magic on her," Feyre said with a frown.

"The magic of the Little People is different from the stuff you've come to know," Amren explained. "It smells different. It works different. It's old, and there's not much of it left anymore, but if you can get enough if it, it's powerful enough to break or remake the world. That creature in there… she wouldn't need a Cauldron to win this war. But it will cost."

"What-?" Feyre began, but Rhys cut her off.

"What happened, Azriel?" he asked sharply.

"I don't know, Rhys," Az said, shaking his head. "That female was not in the Underground when my spies went. Everyone said the Lady of the Underground was powerful, but the female in the palace was… she was what I told you. I swear to you, that creature was not there!"

"Has she a regent? Someone to manage her lands? Most of us do, you know."

Azriel stared. "I… the female in the palace was so near human as to make no difference. She was like any changeling I have ever seen! I thought-"

"That creature is no ordinary changeling!" Rhys cried.

Amren chuckled. "You thought to make a weapon of that child," she said. "You forgot what happens when you give a weapon a heart."

"Changelings don't have hearts," Rhys and Azriel cried together.

"No," Amren agreed. "But humans do, and sometimes hearts grow in unexpected places."

"Will someone  _please_  catch me up to speed?" Feyre cried over all of this.

The clamour died as the three stared at Feyre as though they had forgotten she was there.

"It's your tale to tell, Rhys," Amren said. "You're responsible."

Rhysand sighed and pushed a hand through his perfect hair.

"I think it was three-hundred years ago now, a prophecy was made of a human princess who would grow to become a Fae queen with the power to build or destroy the human or Fae world."

"Someone like me?" Feyre asked. "Someone… created?"

"No," Rhys said. "No, a nativity was cast, and they found the human princess and stole her away, leaving behind a changeling in her place."

Feyre shook her head. "I'd have heard of that."

"Not your human world," Amren said. "In your world, a changeling would have been recognized for what it was in two days. They would have killed the creature and declared war on Prythian straight off. Instead, it was a human realm that had long forgotten the Faeries."

"Besides that, it was nearly 200 years ago. They tried to raise the human child as a Fae." Rhys picked up the story again. "She learned magic, but she never showed the power that had been prophesied."

"They went back to the prophet," Amren said, smiling. Rhysand had never understood her strange soft spot for the demon the High Fae kept tethered.

"He explained that the human girl had never been the princess. She'd been stolen away before she'd ever been presented to her country, and that it was the changeling child who had been prophesied- born on the border of Human and Fae power."

"They kidnapped her back on her twentieth birthday," Amren said.

"They tried to raise her," Rhys said, sounding defeated.

"Here?" Feyre asked.

"No," Amren said. "Was it… Summer Court?"

"Day," Rhys said, shortly. "She and the human princess lived side-by-side until the human girl overheard something about the prophecy. She tried to attack the changeling, and the changeling winnowed away untrained."

"It's not winnowing, what the Old Ones do, but it's close enough," Amren said. "She wandered the courts for twenty years after that, trying to find a place to land."

"You didn't offer her refuge in Velaris?" Feyre asked.

"I didn't think of her," Rhys said. "My father was still High Lord when the first princess was taken, and by the time I sat on the court, I agreed to take the changeling back because we couldn't leave such power in the hands of humans. Amarantha was making her first overtures in those days, I had other things on my mind."

"She came here once," Amren said. "It may be why she has such a low opinion of you, Rhys. She watched them torment a human."

Rhys sighed. "And she thinks I would sanction such a thing."

"Haven't you put quite a lot of effort into making the world think that?" Amren asked.

"Damn," he muttered. "We have to have her on our side. If Hybern were to-"

"I think Hybern will find her no more biddable than you will, but they're likely to be more ruthless. They will threaten her people or, more likely, that pretty bondmate of hers."

"Bondmate?!" Azriel, Rhysand, and Feyre all sat up at this information.

"But he's human!" Feyre said.

"I smelled no bond!" Rhysand said.

Azriel only scowled.

Amren shook her head. "I think it's well past time you spoke to that girl honestly. She can't help but be honest with you, so it's time you extended her the same courtesy."

"What do you mean?" Feyre asked faintly.

"Changelings and other lesser faeries can't lie, my dear. Surely you've heard the stories?"

"We were told it was all fae," she said, looking like the world was crumbling around her.

"A bit of a mix-up in your storytelling," Amren said easily. "It's only the low orders- the piskies and goblins, and the changelings, naturally. It was usually how they were found out, in the old days. That's if they lived to be old enough to talk. I think the highest order that is still bound by that magic is the Suriel."

"The Suriel."

"Mmm, first cousin to your new friend out there," Amren said. "I think she likes you, Feyre."

"The Suriel?" Feyre asked, clearly not following.

Amren laughed. "No, I'm  _sure_  he likes you. Your Lady Swan. She has your name, but she hasn't done you any harm. It's unlike her kind to be patient."

"Feyre's name?" Rhysand asked, his protective instincts rising.

"All of your names, my lad. Names are old magic, like truth and trickery. You'll notice you haven't got hers or her companion's."

The three others exchanged looks.

Amren laughed again. "You thought 'Swan' was her name? No, I think not. She's much too clever for that. She'll have been given her name by the humans who raised her, and she'll have lost it when they made her forget. But I'll wager she knows it now and she knows to take care with it." She turned to Rhysand. "You be honest with her, and you may be surprised what you can accomplish, but I'll warn you because I love you, she has power you don't remember, and you can't defend against what you know nothing about. Don't turn your back on her."

~?~?~?~?~

The Lady of the Underground knew the Old Magic. She knew the power of names and of truth, and she knew that magic  _always_ had a price.

Better than most, she knew the magic that came from the breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, and the pouring of wine. Even the High Fae still remembered that magic in the vaguest of ways in their bonding ceremonies, but the humans remembered better. They remembered the rules of hospitality and knew the dishonor of harming anyone with whom they have broken bread.

The Lady did not trust the High Fae to remember such niceties.

She took two goblets of wine from a passing waiter and handed one to her companion, for it was less remarkable to have a glass than not, but stopped him before he lifted it to his mouth. He had grown too used to the safety of the Underground and their own food and wine, their own laws of hospitality.

"Don't," she said softly, but it acted on him like a spell. He lowered the glass quickly and looked horrified with himself.

The Lady looked around, certain that even such a tiny word would bring down-

"Who are you looking for, my Lady?" the Captain asked quietly.

The Lady considered, and shrugged. It wasn't as though it was a secret here.

"The Lord of Night has a spymaster called a shadowsinger. It is a type of magic that is rare, but means that he can speak to shadows. Nothing said in secret in this place, even if it is overheard by nothing but the walls, remains secret to him. And nothing he knows remains secret to Lord and Lady Night."

A throat cleared behind them, and both the Captain and the Lady turned to find a tall Illyrian standing behind them, far closer than he should have been. The shadows which seemed to wreath him said clearly who he was.

"Speak the name of the one you fear and watch for then he shall appear," the Lady said in a soft sing-song. It was a children's rhyme from a world that still remembered the old ways.

The Illyrian only scowled at her, though he could see a slight wariness in her eyes. He knew her for the monster she was- she suspected it was he who had given the Lord of Night her location.

"Fear not, Illyrian," she said, giving him a cold, bitter smile. "It would only harm you if I knew your name. Don't bother to tell me, best not to bait the beast, don't you think?"

The Illyrian's eyes narrowed. "High Lord Rhysand and High Lady Feyre request your presence, Lady Swan," he said, reaching out and taking her wrist to guide her away.

The Lady twisted her wrist in his grip and, with a move so fast that the Illyrian couldn't block, nor could the Captain follow, she had the larger male's arm twisted behind his back in such a way that he had to bend forward so that his long, graceful ear was at the level of The Lady's mouth.

"Touch me again without my consent, Illyrian," she hissed, "and I will pluck out your wings by the root. Your shadows will have told you what I am, so heed my words as silver truth."

She released him and the Illyrian stumbled back a step before he found his composure again. The Lady looked as calm and pale as she had from the moment she had entered the ballroom. Her companion stepped up beside her and rested a hand on her waist, but she did not lean into the touch.

The Illyrian straightened. "High Lord Rhysand and High Lady Feyre request your presence, Lady Swan," he said again, this time gesturing in the direction she might follow. "Your  _pet_ you may leave or bring, as you will."

The Lady gave him a cool smile. "As though I would leave any possession of mine unsupervised among such an uncivilized company. I might come back to find he had been irreparably damaged, and who knows what monstrous thing I might do in that case."

The Illyrian had found his calm again, and did not respond to this, only nodded and gestured forward again.

"Please follow me, my Lady. Sir."

The Captain turned to her, his face serious, but his eyes sparkling and asked, "have I your permission to take your arm, My Lady?"

The Lady did not answer his smile with one of her own, though she dearly wished to. She only said "you have," and took his arm, regal as a queen.

As they followed the Illyrian, the Captain whispered to her (though he knew the male would hear), "I have no wings for you to threaten, My Lady, and I shudder to imagine you becoming…  _creative_."

The Lady did smile then, though she did not look at her companion. Her sharp teeth were aimed right at the Illyrian male before them, who had glanced back at the Captain's words.

"You know perfectly well, my darling, that I do not make threats. I make  _promises_."

The Illyrian faced forward again and did not look back at them until they had reached the door to which he had intended to lead them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Our heroes finally confront one another with something that resembles honesty.**

* * *

Feyre loved her husband and mate desperately, but she was beginning to doubt his common sense.

Between Az and Rhys's assertions that the Lady of the Underground was little better than a Puka, and Amren's belief that she could break the world with all her power, Feyre was a little surprised to find that the female was just as she had appeared before: human beautiful, and fae proud. She didn't  _look_ like a monster.

Then again… Azriel seemed to be trying to avoid touching her as she passed by him through the door, as though she posed some kind of threat to him. And then there was the matter of her human companion.

The sight of a human in Prythian was one with which Feyre thought she would never be comfortable, in spite of her own history.

This man stood straight-backed as a soldier, and though Feyre had yet to hear him speak, his eyes were intelligent and watchful. She had a difficult time imagining this man as one of those calf-eyed Children of the Blessed, sacrificing themselves to Prythian and believing the Fey to be gentle and kind.

If what his Lady had said was true, however, (and according to Amren, it must be) the land that she ruled was not part of Prythian. Feyre wondered how a human had come to be there.

The Lady swept through the door past Azriel who held it and flinched when her wide skirt brushed against the top of his boot. She stood just inside the door, her human a step behind her. She met Rhysand's eyes first, and then Feyre's for a moment longer, and gave another shallow curtsy.

"Lord and Lady Night," she said, her voice expressionless.

She then turned her eyes to Amren and as their eyes met, the Lady went perfectly still. For a moment, she seemed not to breathe, caught in Amren's swirling black eyes. Then, for the first time since Feyre had ever seen her, the Lady's head bowed, and her knees bent. It seemed, for an instant, as though she would kneel, but Amren reached out and took her elbow to stop her.

"None of that now, Sweet," Amren said in the most gentle voice that Feyre had ever heard her use. "Whatever it is you believe I am, I'm none of it here. Besides," she added, with a sly look at where Rhys stood, "I answer to him, you see. If you were to bow to me, you'd have to genuflect to him, and I can't imagine that would suit you at all."

The Lady gave another fleeting glance toward Rhys and Feyre, but turned her attention almost immediately back to Amren.

"How-" she began.

"It is a very long story, Sweet. We may have time for it later, but not now. Lord Rhysand and Lady Feyre want to speak with you."

The Lady's face went blank as she turned back toward them. Feyre remembered, suddenly, that she had once been a princess. She wondered what kind of queen this woman- this  _creature-_ would have been.

"They want me to join their war," the Lady said.

Feyre felt as flattened as if she had shouted. How could she possibly-

"We want you to help us save the world," Rhysand countered.

"Which world?" the Lady asked.

"Both Prythian and the human world," Feyre said quickly. "We don't intend to leave the humans behind, if that's what worries you."

The Lady met Feyre's eyes and held them for a long, long moment. Feyre wondered how  _anyone_ had mistaken her for human with eyes like that.

"Yours is but one human world," she said softly. "There are thousands, infinitely more. In some, humans still grub in the dirt like animals. In others, they have touched the stars and beyond. I don't fear for the human race dying out, Lady Night."

Feyre felt as though she had been punched in the solar plexus. Thousands of human worlds? Worlds that had moved forward as hers had not. Worlds that didn't depend on the vicissitudes of the magical creatures with whom they shared their space? Worlds that needn't rely on magic at all, but only the creativity and power of humans themselves?

"Will you sit, Lady Swan?" Rhysand asked, his voice as polite as Feyre had ever heard it. "I think we can make our case to you if you give us a chance."

The Lady shook her head. "No, Lord Night. Not unless you agree to speak the truth."

"But of course," Rhysand said, and Feyre could have told him he'd spoken too quickly. "I wouldn't think of-"

The Lady raised a finger to stop him.

"You misunderstand me, High Lord," the Lady said. "It is my nature to speak only truth. I could not lie to you if I wanted to, even to save my own soul. I would that you had the same restriction."

That clearly gave Rhys pause. "I…" he said, then stopped. "I don't know-"

"Don't worry, High Lord. I do."

The Lady turned over one slim, pale hand in a surprisingly graceful movement. When she had made the move, in her hand sat a long knife which had not been there before. It was a crooked, wicked looking blade, dark with age and use.

The effect this small motion had on the males in the room was electric. Rhysand rose from his seat with a roar, and moved in front of Feyre as though the Lady had lunged for her. Azriel moved toward the Lady, as though to disarm her, stopping a foot away from her, indecision that Feyre had never seen before crossing his face. Even the human man went tense and watchful. The Lady did not move, nor did she draw her fingers around the blade in threat. It only sat inert, balanced across her open palm.

"You would bring such a weapon into my court?" Rhys growled.

"Obviously," the Lady said, sounding irritated. "You can see it here before you. If your question is whether I have had it on me this entire night, the answer is no. It has been sitting in my spellroom in the Underground for several weeks until this moment." She met Rhysand's eyes. "I know the laws, High Lord, though I would remind you again that I am no citizen of your lands and they do not apply to me."

She made no threatening move, only lifted her hand slightly, as though to show the knife that lay across it to better advantage.

"This is the blade I stole from the Dark One when I learned the prophecy that sealed my fate," she said softly. She met Rhysand's eyes. "You think you have a leash on him, and yet he built this to kill the Fae. It is cold iron for the low, with an ashwood core for the high."

Feyre could feel the tension pouring out of Rhysand.

"It is the only weapon I think will be effective here. High Lord," she said, finally wrapping her fingers around the handle of the knife, "is your need for me so great that to meet my terms you are willing to bleed?"

Rhysand opened his mouth but before he could speak, the Lady shook her head.

"It was the wrong question. Is your need so great that you are willing that your  _lady_  would bleed?"

Rhys went tense again, and Feyre could hear the "no" singing across their bond.

"It is not my choice," he said through clenched teeth.

The Lady cocked her head, her cool mask just slightly cracked. "Is it not? How novel." She turned those uncanny green eyes on Feyre. "High Lady," she said, inclining her head slightly, "is your husband's need of me so great that you would bleed to secure my help?"

"It's my need as well, and my blood is not so precious," Feyre said to her own surprise. The Lady's manner of speech seemed to be rubbing off on her.

"Brave girl," the human man murmured low.

His Lady turned to give him a look over her shoulder and for the first time, Feyre believed them bonded. It was a  _married_ look, equal parts irritation and affection. She had seen the expression on Rhys' face, and no doubt he'd seen it on hers.

The Lady turned back to Feyre and took the seat across from her. "Give me your hand, Lady Night," she said.

"You can call me Feyre-" she began, only to be interrupted.

"You should not offer what you do not understand. Give me your hand."

Feyre reached out her left hand, the one that Rhysand's ring glinted from, and noticed for the first time that there was a simple band of gold on the Lady's left hand as well. How had she missed it before?

The Lady took her hand in a gentle but clinical grip, though Feyre was surprised to find that her skin blazed nearly hot. Did all of the low fae burn so bright? The Lady turned Feyre's hand over to expose the palm and raised the knife, causing both Rhysand and Azriel to tense.

"Calm yourselves," Amren said. The Lady seemed not even to notice them.

She brought the knife down, point first, into the pad of Feyre's index finger. It was so sharp that Feyre felt nothing, though the Lady pulled the knife away with a single drop of blood glimmering at the tip, the wound had already healed.

The Lady brought the tip of the knife to her own tongue, leaving the blood there.

"Now you must do the same to me," the Lady said, turning the knife around to offer to Feyre. "It'll be easier for you, I don't heal as quickly."

"Feyre," Amren said, arresting Feyre's hand in the air as she reached for the Lady's knife, "have you got your own knife?"

The Lady looked at Amren and nodded. "You are right, my Lady. I did not think it through. Your friend is correct that it would work better with your own knife, Lady Night."

"Call me Amren," Amren said.

The Lady looked at her for a moment, then bowed her head again. "As you wish, Amren."

Feyre considered objecting before it occurred to her (as, perhaps, it should have done ages ago) that "Amren" was surely no more Amren's real name than "Swan" was the Lady of the Underground's.

Cauldron boil her, did she know  _anything_ she thought she did?

"Your knife, Lady Night?" Lady Swan asked again.

"I… I haven't got one," Feyre said, feeling oddly disappointed in herself. The look of irritation that both Lady Swan and Amren shot at Rhys compounded the feeling.

"I do have this!" Feyre said, inspiration striking. She withdrew a long, wicked-looking hairpin from the style that Mor had created for her that evening.

Lady Swan drew her fingertip down it and shook her head. "Silver is a handsome metal, Lady Night, but iron is what we need." She turned toward Azriel. "Shadowsinger, have you an iron blade for your High Lady to use?"

"Az?" Feyre asked, confused. "I thought you needed a blade that is mine?"

"Is he not your subject?" Lady Swan asked. "Your vassal? What is his is yours, is it not, Shadowsinger?"

"It is, High Lady," Azriel said, drawing a blade and offering it, hilt first, to Feyre.

The blade was one that was clearly owned by a male who cherished them. It was clean and sharp, though not new. It was kept well, though it did not shine as steel would. Instead it was a lethal-looking dull grey.

Feyre hefted the knife, and Lady Swan offered her left hand.

"Draw the blade across the palm, High Lady," she said, "if you are not used to handling one. It is simpler and will assure sufficient blood."

Feyre considered objecting- she had used a knife, many and many times- but for butchery and death, not the neat artistry that the Lady seemed to.

She drew the point across the crease in the middle of the Lady's hand- what she knew was called the "heart line" on a human hand. What would it be for a creature with no heart? The cut was not deep, but it bled freely. Far more so than she had done.

"Do… do I take the blood from the knife?" Feyre asked, uncertain.

"From the blade or from my hand, as it pleases you," the Lady said, calm and serene, even as her blood began to drip onto the table.

Feyre began to lift the blade, as the Lady had done, but something stopped her. Some instinct had her reaching for the Lady's hand and lifting it to her mouth to touch her tongue right in the center of her palm where the blood welled.

"Brave girl." This time it was Amren who said it.

"Thank you, Lady Night," Lady Swan said, a flicker of a smile on the corner of her red mouth.

Before she could say more, her human companion knelt on one knee before her, taking her hand and setting it on his thigh. He then rummaged in a pocket, pulling out a pure white silk handkerchief. He seemed to care little for the fineness of the fabric, for he pressed it into his Lady's hand, heedless of the blood that would stain it. The Lady turned over her right hand in the graceful gesture she had made before, but this time it was a length of fabric sitting in her palm when she showed it, not a knife. The man reached for it, wrapped the wadding against her hand, single-handedly tied the ends together on the back, then lifted it to his mouth to tug the ends tight. During all of this, he never once took his eyes from his Lady's face.

For the first time, Feyre noticed that his left hand was stiff and wooden. A false hand. What was this man that he had won the heart of a powerful Faerie queen, in spite of physical deficiency. The Fey that Feyre knew prized perfection.

The Lady lay her bandaged hand on his cheek when he was done.

"Thank you, Sweet," she said, and her voice was low and gentle.

The man stood, and the Lady turned to Feyre, her face composed, and when she spoke, it was in her normal tones.

"Do you fear me, Feyre?" she asked.

Feyre could hear every lung in the room stop when Lady Swan used her name.

Her tongue was behind her teeth, ready to say "no" when she choked on the word. It simply would not come out.

"You cannot tell me a lie, High Lady," Lady Swan said. "A worthy test of the spell, I think. I will tell you so you know it is true that I have no wish to harm you, nor anyone here." She glanced over her shoulder at Azriel. "Even you, Shadowsinger."

Questions fired through Feyre's head, and she couldn't decide which one to ask first. The human man? Azriel? Amren? The humans in other realms?

The Lady seemed to have no such confusion. "Tell me, Lady Night. What manner of creature are you?"

"I am High Fae," Feyre said. It seemed she had no strictures on half-truths.

"Yes, my dear, I can see that," the High Lady said, sounding slightly cross. "But you're more than that too. Tell me."

Feyre hesitated, but it wasn't as though the story was a secret.

"I am not more, I am less. I was brought to Prythian a human, meant to fall in love with the High Lord of Spring to break the curse over these lands."

The Lady glanced around themselves. "A human is hardly less in my eyes. Yet here we are, in the Court of the Night. Do you split your time, sweet Persephone? Six months in Spring and six in the Night? Your Hades is more handsome than the stories would have him. I see why the winters grow longer each year."

The room was still and tense. Rhysand, Feyre, and Azriel glared daggers at the Lady. Amren looked amused. Her companion laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Your love life is none of my concern, High Lady," Swan said into the tension. "How come you to be the creature I see before me today if you were born a human?"

"I died," Feyre bit out. "I died breaking the curse, and Tamlin and Rhysand saved me, along with the other High Lords. They gave me a High Fae body and power no one intended."

"They loved you," Lady Swan said quietly. Then, with a slight frown, repeated, "they  _love_ you."

"They-" Feyre began, choking. "They  _both_ love me?"

"I am no prophet," the Lady said, "but I cannot say what isn't true. Yes, Persephone, your Night Lord  _and_ your Spring Lord love you still."

Feyre felt flattened. She sifted through the questions in her mind and chose the one she thought would hurt the most.

"How do you bond to a human?" she asked. "What will happen to you when he dies?" She hurled the questions like iron-tipped ash arrows, hoping to land in the Lady's heart.

The Lady looked as calm as she had from the first moment, though Feyre's clever eyes saw that her right hand had balled into a fist in her lap so tight that the knuckles stood out white against her skin.

"What will happen to you when your High Lord dies?" the Lady returned. "You will go mad, and you will probably die soon after. It is similar for us."

"You selfish creature," Rhysand whispered. "You, with all your power, would assure your own madness in what? Fifty years? Sixty? By accepting a mating bond, you have doomed us all!"

The Lady and her companion shared a look.

"Fifty years?" she asked. "We've been together for a hundred already. We risk no more than any powerful creature. We risk no more than you did."

"A hundred years?" Feyre said, and it was clearly a question.

"Love, Lady Night, is the oldest magic there is. I have no heart to give, so instead I gave my lover my life. So long as I live, he does, and so long as he lives, I do. If one of us dies, the other will as well. It's reciprocal magic of the simplest kind."

"I don't believe it," Rhysand said, sounding angry. "A bond of a hundred years and I smell nothing!"

The Lady snorted through her nose. It was the first undignified thing that Feyre had ever witnessed her doing, and it wiped away much of the animus that had been growing toward her.

The Lady lifted her right hand gracefully, her middle finger and thumb touching in an unbroken circle. She separated her fingers and the room filled with the combined smells of sea brine and apple blossoms, twined so closely together that they were near overwhelming. They were wildness and home. Known and unknown.

And then it was gone. The Lady's fingers made the circle again, and she was glaring daggers at Rhysand.

"I have never been impressed with this Fey notion that we should sniff each other's asses like dogs," she said, clearly in a temper. "I would protect my privacy and my love besides with more than a little glamour, believe me."

Rhys seemed stunned back into silence, but Feyre was not.

"What kind of man are you?" she asked the man standing behind the Lady of the Underground.

The Lady answered for him. "He's many things and has been many things. He's been a brother, a slave, a lover, a sailor, a naval lieutenant, and a pirate captain. He's Lord of the Underground and Captain of the legendary ship Jolly Roger."

Amren, Azriel, and Rhysand were galvanized by this.

"Jolly Roger?" Az and Rhys said together.

"I said if you were honest, you might learn something," Amren murmured.

The Lady and the Captain watched the faces around them warily. Feyre, once again, felt as though she were missing an entire chapter in this story.

"Please explain yourselves," The Lady said, soft and polite. For the first time, Feyre noticed that her wounded left hand was wrapped loosely around the hilt of her crooked iron knife.

"For years… centuries really, there came with some regularity a ship called Jolly Roger to the docks of Velaris. It was crewed by men, they said, but men who never aged. A year or two might go before they'd return, but when they did, they'd look just the same as they had the last time they'd been there. So the story goes," Rhysand said.

"I saw them," Azriel said. "I saw them for many years. They were pirates, sure, but not wicked men. Not evil." He frowned at the Captain for a moment, looking him over. "Their captain was a man who called himself 'Hook.'"

The Lady lifted her left hand and when she turned it over, the crooked iron knife was gone and in its place was a bright steel hook.

The Captain, with quick economy of motion, twisted the wooden hand and dropped it into his Lady's other hand. As she vanished it with another turn, he twisted his hook into place and gave another short bow, this one with a graceful left-hand flourish.

"Captain Hook," he said, humor and pride both clear in his voice. "At your service."

"You would do well to remember that he is not like me. He is human," the Lady said, warning clear in hers. "Such niceties are not promises from  _his_ lips."

She turned away from the Fae in the room and back to her companion. "Velaris," the Lady said, frowning seriously. "I recall Velaris."

"Aye," he said slowly. "In the two-hundred years before I knew you, I went to Velaris many and many a time."

"Two hundred-" Feyre began, but the Lady raised a hand which stopped her voice in her throat.

"I may explain in time, Persephone, but it is my turn for a question answered." She turned back to her mate who resumed his story.

"After I met you, it seemed senseless to continue going to the faerie port since I had access to a faerie kingdom." He shrugged. "I tried to take you once though, do you remember? Some… twenty years ago I think. We tried to take the Jolly through a portal, but when we came out the other side we had not moved."

"I recall," the Lady said. "You did not tell me you were taking me to Faerie."

The man smiled. "It was meant to be a surprise, Love."

The Lady shook her head though she smiled. "The trials when one's lover can tell lies, I do not know. Tell me of Velaris."

"It is the great city of the Kingdom of Night," Rhysand said, though the question had not been directed toward him.

"No," the Captain said to this assertion, his eyes steely on the Lord of Night. "Velaris is the only port in all of Faerie where humans were accepted. I do not believe it was any part of….  _This_."

This last word was spat like poison and encompassed everything. The ceremonial glut, the screeching from outside the ballroom like a murder of crows consuming carrion, the whole wicked lot of it. Feyre remembered Under the Mountain where she had been brought, like this man, frail and human and without even the protection he had, for his Lady was unchained in her power.

Yes, to imagine her own beloved Velaris as a part of this… it would boggle the human mind.

"It is," she cried, standing and staring into those human blue eyes. "Velaris is-" Feyre realized that her tongue felt different in her mouth. Less constrained. She remembered the Lady's words and realized it was only to her that she could speak no lies. Only with her had she exchanged that drop of blood.

Feyre fell into her seat and held the Lady's green eyes. "Velaris is the real Court of Night," she said. "The Court of Dreams. This-" she gestured at the walls carved from stone far away from the beauty of the stars, "-this is only a memory of times gone by. Only a nightmare, washed quickly away by the starlight."

The Lady looked at her for a long, long time.

"Tell me of your Velaris," she said, finally.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I had a lot of trouble with this fic, trying to figure out where to put the chapter breaks. Just know, if you're dissatisfied with them, so am I.**
> 
> **You may have noticed that the chapter count has increased suddenly.  I've been writing missing scenes and epilogues for this story, and I officially have three rather than the one I started with.  They're really shockingly smutty, I'm embarrassed with myself.  There's another one in my head, so expect another change!**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday!**

Captain Hook and Lady Swan stood on the prow of the Jolly Roger under the hot sun, staring out to the empty horizon.

"If we do this," the Captain asked, voice low so they could not be overheard by the crew, "does it mean we've agreed to do as they ask?"

"No," the Lady said, clear as a bell. "It is another test. The High Lord-"

"Rhysand," the Captain said. There was no danger in his using their names.

"As you say," the Lady continued. "He told us we would be able to reach Velaris in spite of it being closed to outsiders, so now we must see if he can keep his word."

She made a motion with her hand- it looked almost like she had thrown something into the water, though it was only a flick of her wrist. Before them opened up a great whirlpool in the sea, pulling and sucking at the Jolly Roger already.

"Forward, Men," Captain Hook called over the clamour of the water. "To Velaris!"

~?~?~?~?~

Feyre, Cassian, Morrigan, Rhysand, Azriel, and Amren stood together on the Velaris docks, staring out to the horizon, waiting.

"They won't come," Cassian said moodily. "You can't trust a changeling. Or a pirate, for that matter."

"They made us no promises, Cas," Rhysand said, soothingly. "It's not a matter of trust."

"Then what are we doing out here?" Cassian asked. "Other than burning in the sun and losing an entire day's worth of training and planning?"

"It's about  _hope_ , Cassian," Feyre said quellingly.

"Wars don't run on hope, High Lady," Cas said.

"You'd best  _hope_ she comes," Amren snarled. "Because I suspect we haven't got a  _hope_ without her."

They all subsided back into silence. Feyre felt tense and prickly all over. She wanted to win the coming war against Hybern, and Amren was sure that Swan was their key, but even more than that, she wanted to see the Lady of the Underground and her Pirate companion again.

The Lady was clever and cruel and proud as any fae, but something about her appealed to Feyre. She wasn't sure if it was the strong bond she shared with her human mate, or it was her courage in the face of clear intimidation, or simply the fact that she seemed to respect Feyre, in spite of everything. Feyre would be sorry if the previous night was the last time she ever saw the Lord and Lady of the Underground.

"Look!" Rhysand cried, pointing out to sea.

The rest of the group gave him their attention, then followed the line of his finger out to the water where there rose, like a leviathan from the deep, a great mast, rigged, with sails following shortly thereafter, and then the great hull of a fine brig.

"Is it them?" Feyre asked.

"It can hardly be anyone else," Morrigan said, but even she leaned forward as though a few more inches might give her the detail she needed to determine the origin of the ship.

Rhysand reached into his pocket and withdrew a spyglass. Unlike Lady Swan, he had to carry such items on his person. Feyre wondered how she did it- pulling items from thin air as she had done. It wasn't a trick she'd ever seen anyone else do, or if they had, it would have taken masses of magical energy. The Lady had done it without thought.

"They're flying a crimson flag," Rhys said, the spyglass to his eye.

"I can hardly imagine a different human pirate ship making it through your barriers, Rhys," Morrigan said.

"Let me see," Feyre said, holding out her hand for the spyglass. When Rhys turned it over she pressed it to her eye and found the ship quickly.

Two figures stood at the prow, one dark and one golden. She couldn't see their expressions from that distance, but something told her they were smiling. The bright figure took the hands of the dark one and spun them around, then darted away into the busy scramble of the rest of the ship, leaving the dark figure to turn back to Velaris.

Feyre followed the blonde figure with her spyglass. She moved among the crew easily, as though she belonged. The movement had grace and dignity, but none of the self-possession and pride of the previous night.

Several men stood on the cross-beam of the sail to get a better view of the city, and the golden-haired figure climbed the rigging, acrobatic as a monkey, to join them.

Feyre lowered the glass and grinned at Rhys.

"It's them," she said. "I'm sure of it."

It took nearly half an hour for the ship to come in, which was more than enough time for both Cassian and Mor to get bored. Cassian vented his ennui by storming off down the dockside road and grumbling. Morrigan dealt with hers by chasing after him and picking on him. For once, Azriel ignored the pair, as focussed on the growing ship as Feyre, Rhysand, and Amren.

"Are you certain about them, Rhys?" Az asked when the ship was as large as Feyre's hand held a foot in front of her face and she could make out Lady Swan from among the others in the rigging without the spyglass.

Rhysand shrugged. "As certain as I am about anything in this blasted war. I don't  _dis_ trust them, and Amren and Feyre are sure, so who am I to argue?"

Azriel did not state the obvious fact that who he was was High Lord, and able to decide against even Amren and the High Lady.

Cassian and Mor joined them as the ship came into port.

"Are we meant to bow to them?" Cas asked, sounding as though he might mutiny if the answer was yes.

Rhysand turned to stare at him as though he were mad. "They are an envoy from another land in Faerie, and I hope to make them allies in the coming war, though they are currently reluctant. Of course you have to bow to them! What are you thinking?"

"I don't like Changelings," Cas said through clenched teeth. "Or any creature that can change its skin."

"Like me, you mean?" Feyre asked, sounding casual.

Cassian looked stricken. "High Lady, I didn't mean-"

"I do suggest you watch your tongue, my lad," Amren said, sounding bored. "Lest you trip over it."

The Jolly Roger slid into port at that moment, and half a dozen men vaulted themselves over the side to land with a crash on the quay and began to tie her down with ropes thrown down after them by their mates still aboard.

In the center of the deck stood Captain Hook, barking orders to his men, dressed head-to-toe in black leather and looking far more comfortable in it than he had in his silk the previous night.

Up on the crossbeam of the mast, the men were furling the sails. This included, to Feyre's surprise, Lady Swan. She knelt beside the crewmen with equal balance and grace, her hands moving quick and sure on the sailcloth. The men showed no surprise- it was clear she was no stranger to this task among them.

The crew of the Jolly Roger worked well and quickly, and it was only a few moments before a set of stairs was lowered and Captain Hook stood at the top.

"You're welcome aboard the Jolly Roger, Lord Rhysand," he called.

As the court mounted the steps, there was still a swirl of motion as the crew found their proper places. The Lady Swan scrambled down the rigging, and Feyre noticed that her wide skirt never tangled her legs as it should have done. One of the men took her by the waist and swung her down the last few feet of rope, setting her gently on the decking and making her giggle.

Feyre had not thought such a creature could laugh, let alone  _giggle_.

Swan crossed the deck and took her place beside the Captain. While he was dressed nearly as finely has he had been the previous night, though in very different style, the Lady could have been a peasant girl, save for her perfect posture, skin, and teeth. Her hair was in a long braid over her shoulder, and her skirt was plain grey cotton, her shirt unbleached muslin, and her feet were bare.

Rhysand stepped forward and bowed to the pair of them as though they were dressed as king and queen.

"Lady Swan, Captain Hook, I welcome you to Velaris. Please allow me to introduce my court."

He offered a hand which Lady Swan took, and guided her down the line.

"My Commander General, Cassian," he said first.

Lady Swan bowed her head in response to Cassian's clearly unwilling bow. "Illyrian," she said, a breath of humor behind her voice.

"Changeling," he growled back.

"Here we have my cousin, the Morrigan," Rhys said, pulling Lady Swan away from Cassian as quickly as possible.

"Lady Seer," Lady Swan said with another bow of her head.

"You may call me Morrigan" Mor said, before Swan could cut her off.

"That is kind of you, Lady," she said, "but I would prefer not."

"You have already met Azriel," Rhysand said, guiding her on.

"Shadowsinger," the Lady said. When Azriel rose from his stiff bow, she met his eyes. "You have my consent, should it become necessary. I would prefer you not abuse it, however."

Az blinked in surprise, and then gave the barest of smiles. "You are very kind, my Lady," he said.

The Lady laughed. "No, I'm not. But I can't have you flinching every time we are in spitting distance of one another now, can I? And I think your wings are very fine, it would be a tragedy to have any harm come to them."

By the time she moved on, Azriel was smiling in truth.

"Amren," Rhysand said, simply.

"My Lady," Swan said, and bowed a little deeper than she had for anyone else.

"I am glad you came, Sweet," Amren said.

"And, of course, my mate, Feyre."

The Lady smiled in truth this time. "Persephone," she said. She did not bow, but Feyre couldn't help but smile back.

"May I present to you the crew of the Jolly Roger?" the Lady asked, sweeping her hand out to encompass all the men standing on deck, awaiting their attention.

The men bowed. It was awkward and un-choreographed, but it was respectful.

"You are all very welcome in Velaris. Your Captain and Lady speak very highly of you all," Rhysand said. "Lodging has been arranged for you at the Kraken's Embrace, just north of the docks. I thought you might appreciate being near the sea, but if you would prefer rooms higher in the city, it can be arranged."

There was a murmur of confusion, even shock, among the men, and Rhysand glanced down at the Lady.

"Have I done something wrong?" he asked.

"Pirates are not used to such an honorable welcome," she said with a smile. "You are very kind, High Lord."

"I am no more kind than you are, Lady Swan," he said. "I have my motives, as well you know."

She did not deny. "Treating my men with respect is a much more effective method of earning my goodwill than trying to trick or intimidate me, High Lord."

She turned away from Rhysand then, met eyes with the Captain, and nodded.

"Off with you then, Lads." Hook called. "Remember you are here representing your Lady. Don't force me to bail any of you out of jail, won't you?"

The men laughed, and with his leave, began to file off the ship. As each one passed his captain, he saluted, and as each passed his Lady, he touched her hand, or said a word, or tugged a cap.

At the end of the file were a few of the younger crewmen- clearly the lowest-ranked. Three looked barely twenty, no older than the Lady herself looked, and each took her hand and kissed her knuckles save for the last. Feyre recognized him as the man who had lifted her from the rigging. He hugged her tight enough to lift her feet from the decking, then dropped her and kissed her cheek.

"Do try to stay out of trouble, my dear Bertram," she said, touching his stubbly cheek with her soft hand.

"I cannot promise anything, my Lady," he said with a grin. "But I shall acquit myself honorably in your name."

"It's hardly polite to do so in another lady's name, my lad," Captain Hook said, joining the pair. "The lass tends to be offended."

The boy gave his captain a cheeky salute and another wink at the Lady and jogged off the ship with a merry wave to the Night Court contingent.

"Your men love you," Rhys said softly. "That tells me the kind of people you are, if nothing else could."

"They respect me," Hook corrected. "They love her."

The Lady shook her head. "They love you, but as one must love their captain- with a little distance. To me they are brothers and sons all."

"Even Bertram?" Mor asked, one eyebrow winging high.

The Lady smiled. "I've known him since he was seven years old. He's an exuberant creature, but it's all in fun. He once thought of me as his mother, and now he views me as a sister. If he remains with us long enough, perhaps he will view me as a daughter. Some of them do."

"What happened to the ageless crew?" Azriel asked.

"In those years, we were spending much of our time in Neverland," Captain Hook said. "It is a very long story, the why of it. These days we spend as little time there as possible, and my men age as all men must."

" _Most_  men," the Lady corrected.

"And they don't ask why they age and you do not?" Morrigan asked.

"While they serve on the crew of the Jolly Roger, they know what I am, and what the Captain is to me," the Lady said. "If they choose to leave our company they… forget." A small shadow seemed to cross her face as she said it.

"You can make people forget you?" Rhys asked, interested. He and Feyre had the power, but it was rare.

"It is costly, but yes," the Lady said, her tone brooking no further questions.

The silence following this statement was awkward and rang with unasked questions.

It was the Captain who saved them. He took his Lady's hand to draw her away from Rhysand and threaded her hand through his arm.

"High Lord Rhysand, I am eager to see your Velaris," he said. "It's been many years since last I saw it, and you will be far more familiar with it than I. Lead on, sir."

Rhys nodded and led the way down the steps to the quay. Cassian followed him quickly, with Mor and Azriel shortly on his heels. Amren followed after them.

Feyre hesitated, the anxiety returning. Now that Hook and Swan were back, she felt oddly reluctant to let them out of her sight. What if, as soon as she and her court were off the ship, they fled back to the world of men and Feyre never saw them again?

She told herself this was foolish. Their crew was here, and Feyre had seen, as Rhys had, the love shared among them. They would not abandon their men.

Feyre started down the stairs several steps behind the rest of her court, and so was not quite far enough not to catch the words that Hook said, low, into his Lady's ear.

"Are you alright, Love? We needn't do anything you cannot face."

"Thank you," the Lady said, not answering the question.

"Hey," Hook said, and Feyre glanced over at them, just barely still able to see over the railing.

Lady Swan appeared to have taken a step toward the quay, but the Captain had laid his hook on her hip to stop her. Instead he pulled her to him and kissed her gently, his right hand cupping her face like a precious ornament. The sight of it made Feyre's heart squeeze.

"I'll be here beside you every step of the way," Hook said softly. "I love you, Emma."

Feyre hurried down the rest of the steps before she could be caught, but held the knowledge she had been given close in her heart.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Something, something, something, read and review.**

The Lady had lived a very long time, but as she walked through Velaris she came to realize that she could not remember ever having had a day like this- a frivolous day with friends.

The High Lord led his followers into a small bakery a few streets inland from the docks. The place smelled golden with bread and butter. Captain Hook's stomach growled even as they stepped over the threshold, making their companions laugh.

"I thought, perhaps, breakfast was in order before we drag you through our fair city," Rhysand said, grinning. "It would seem I was right."

The friends jostled forward to look at the options, argue the benefits, and make their selections.

The Lady was separated from her lover as he pushed forward and she hung back. She rarely felt hunger for food, and so the baked treats held little interest for her. Instead she found herself watching the kitchen with its rhythms and choreography. Though she ate little, the process of  _making_ held endless fascination for her. In her own kingdom, the nourishment of anyone who needed it was handled by the Kitchen. On the Jolly Roger, they made food in the traditional way, but the food on a pirate ship (even as prosperous a one as the Jolly) had none of the artistry on display before her now.

"Would you like to try something?"

The Lady was jolted from her reverie by a question at her shoulder. When she turned, she found the High Lady standing there holding some type of biscuit in her hand.

"This is my favorite," Lady Night continued. "It reminds me of something our cook at home used to make, back when we had a cook." She broke it in half and offered one to the Lady. "Want to try?"

The Lady stared at the item in the girl's hand. Was it a trap, or did the child simply not know?

The Old Ways hold that breaking bread together is a sacred act. When two creatures share food and drink, they have made a covenant with one-another and one cannot harm the other.

The Lady was bound to these laws- if she accepted the hospitality and took a meal with the Court of Night, she could do them no harm. If they broke the covenant first and harmed her, she could retaliate, but to that first blow she would be defenseless.

Swan glanced over the High Lady's shoulder to see that the General, the Shadowsinger, and the Seer pushing tables together to accommodate the whole group. The High Lord was talking to the proprietor, and Amren and Hook were at the window to the street pointing in such a way that indicated they were discussing the layout of the city.

Though it went against the grain to make herself vulnerable, she had no desire to harm any of these.

Perhaps the time had come to try something new: trust. Hook had suggested it to her while they had debated their situation on the Jolly Roger the night before. It rankled, but perhaps it was time to put a toe in the water.

The Lady took the biscuit the High Lady held out to her and bit into it. It was lemon-flavoured and buttery, melting in the Lady's mouth and leaving behind a taste of summer.

"It's lovely, Persephone," she said.

The High Lady smiled and took her arm to lead her to the table, taking the seat beside her quickly before anyone else could.

"Lady Swan," she said once everyone was seated, "I've been wondering something, would you answer a question for me?"

"You may ask," the Lady said.

The Seer, sitting on the High Lady's other side, snorted. "You don't give a lot of straight answers, do you?"

The Lady opened her mouth to answer this, but was cut off by Hook.

"If she says she'll answer a question, she must answer," he said, glaring at the Seer with his vivid blue eyes. "If you ask her what her greatest weakness is, how to kill her, or how to destroy the Underground, she would have to tell you. Of course she won't guarantee an answer, she's no fool."

"Thank you," the Lady said to her man, as the Seer looked chastened. "You could also ask me tomorrow's weather, or the sex of your first child, and I would have to answer true, and I care very little for prophecy."

The High Lady choked on her biscuit. "Child?" she asked, looking pale. She glanced at Rhysand whose eyes had gone focussed. "I'm going to have a child?"

The Lady pursed her lips, looking annoyed. "Is that your question, Lady Night? You've a true Seer in your midst. If you want fortunes told, ask her, I wish no part of it."

"No," the High Lady said, shaking her head. "No, I'm sorry. You're right, that's not my question. I'd actually been wondering… who is Persephone?"

The temper cleared from the Lady's face and she glanced around the table to find similarly curious expressions on the other faces, save that of the human.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I hadn't realized the tale wasn't known here. It's a legend from another world."

"So tell us," the High Lord said.

The Lady met her Companion's eyes in a bid for help. He only smiled.

"It's you they want," he said. "Go on, Love."

"You're a better storyteller," she said, and because she could, it was true.

"Not this one I think," he responded, shaking his head. "Go on then, it's been a time since I heard it as well."

The Lady frowned into her hands as though she were gathering her thoughts.

"It's… it's a story of the gods in a world that has mostly forgotten the Fae, and mostly still remembers the gods. As with any legend, different people tell it differently.

"It begins long before Persephone… The world was ruled by the Titans, but the Fates saw that one of the Titans, Chronos, would father the child who would defeat them. To beat fate, whenever his wife bore him a child, he swallowed the infant, to ensure it could never rise against him.

"His wife was so distraught by this behavior though that, finally, when she bore a son she gave his father a rock to eat and sent the child away to grow into a man. That child was called Zeus.

"He returned, as you knew he would, and his first act in his war against the Titans was to cut open his father's belly and release his siblings to fight at his side.

"The war raged for years. The eldest child was a son called Hades. He had the alliances of some of the Titans, and to bring their strength to the fight, Zeus promised his brother the hand in marriage of his firstborn daughter. They swore on one of the rivers of the Underworld, and so the bargain was sealed. Zeus also promised himself in marriage to another of his sisters, Demeter, to secure her own allies among the Titans, but when they were brought forward, rather than fighting on the side of the new gods, the Earth threw up even more Titans in their path. So the alliance was broken, but the baby was already conceived. The Fates called her Persephone." The Lady met the eyes of the High Lady as she said this last.

"Eventually the war ended. The world was divided among the strongest of the siblings- the three brothers. They drew lots for the Heavens, the Seas, and the Underworld. The middle brother, Poseidon, won the Seas. The youngest, Zeus, won the Heavens. The eldest, Hades, had the Underworld.

"The child, Persephone, was born, but in an attempt to defy the fates Demeter called her Kore, which means young girl or maiden, and kept her by her side long after she should have honored Zeus' alliance and given her to the Lord of the Underworld in marriage.

"Some say Demeter was protecting her sweet daughter from the Dark God. She had been sold long before she could consent to her own marriage, and she had powers like her mother- to grow flowers and plants and help the harvest come in. Nothing grows in the Underworld, so what would she do there?

"But the Fates will not be defied forever, and will they or nill they, even the gods are not strong enough to defeat them. Fate had a greater plan for our Kore than only to be a flower maiden at her mother's side for all time. They had named her "Persephone:" the destroyer of light, and the queen of chaos.

"Some stories claim that Hades came and stole Kore away from her mother, kidnapping her and trapping her in the Underworld when she would prefer to be in the world above. Others say that Kore wandered unknowing into the Underworld. Still other say she went with full knowledge. I think the best story lies somewhere in the middle.

"What is agreed is that Kore became Persephone, Queen of the Underworld by Hades' side, but Demeter mourned her daughter and froze the world. Persephone returns to her mother's side six months of the year to bring warmth and sunlight back in spring and summer, but returns to her husband's side in the autumn and winter. Some say she only returns because she was tricked into eating six pomegranate seeds, and so she must return for six months each year. I don't like that story though."

"You said the best story falls in the middle," the Seer said softly. "What do you think happened?"

The Lady looked up from her hands and met her companion's eyes with a small smile.

"I think Kore might not have known precisely what she was getting herself into when she went to the Underworld, but she went willing. I think she saw a ruler over memories and death and loved him in spite of his darkness and the belief that he was a monster. I think she returns to the Earth because some creatures are not made to live always below, without the sky above them. And she returns for pity, to feed the humans her mother would have sacrificed in her mourning. But she is the destroyer of light, our Persephone. When she returns to her throne at her husband's side and the days shorten and the nights lengthen, she has gone to her proper place."

The group was silent at this, no one seemed willing to speak. The High Lord and Lady were staring at each other in surprise. Hook and Swan were smiling at one another, some secret communication passing between their eyes.

It was the General who finally broke the silence.

"Are we going to sit around telling stories all day?" he asked. "I thought we were meant to be entertaining your new allies, Rhys. Seems to me the job's not being done if your guests are the ones telling fairy tales."

His rudeness did manage to galvanize the rest of the group, and outside the bakery in the sunlight, the remains of the story seemed to fall away from them all.

Amren bid them all adieu and left, citing some previous engagement, though the Lady suspected she had had all the frivolity her old heart could handle for a single day. The General gazed jealously after her, but at a sharp word from the High Lord, returned his attention to the group, picking up a conversation that the Shadowsinger was having with Hook about sailing.

"Where to next?" the High Lady asked, bringing the group's attention back together.

"Clothing," the Seer said with finality. "Lady Swan cannot be asked to continue going about like that."

Lady Swan looked surprised at that news. She glanced down at herself and then back at the Seer.

"What's wrong with my clothes?"

The Seer pursed her lips. "You aren't wearing any shoes, and you're dressed like a peasant."

The Lady twitched her skirt aside and seemed surprised to see her bare feet beneath. "So you say," she said. She then stomped each foot on the ground, and by the time it had landed, she was wearing a pair of simple black boots. She returned her attention to the Seer. "Better?"

"That," the Seer said flatly, "is impossible."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You cannot make something of nothing. Or… you can but it takes masses of power. Rhys might be able to make… I don't know… a sewing needle or button, but we could make a circle of every powerful fae in the city and I don't believe we could make even one boot."

"I didn't make them," the Lady said indignantly. "I bought them. All I had to do was to retrieve them from my wardrobe. Putting them on by magic was a bit of a show-off, but to actually get them? It barely takes more magic than you use to keep your hair properly curled, Lady Seer."

"What-"

The Lady sighed. "If you know where something is, all you have to do is fold the space between where you are and where it is." She brought the fingers of her right hand together as though gathering fabric. "And there it is." She turned over her hand to display a compass sitting in the middle of it.

"Do be sure you put that back where you got it from," Hook said, sounding bored. "I shall be very put out if we go to sail and that has been misplaced."

The Lady wrinkled her nose at him, but turned her hand over, vanishing the item presumably back to where it had been taken from.

"You say that like it's simple," the Seer said. "Just fold space and have what you want, but it's impossible."

"I am sorry," the Lady said. "I cannot explain it better. All I can tell you is that if I know where the item is and it is close enough, I can retrieve it."

"How close is close enough?" the High Lady asked before the Seer could say again that it was impossible.

The Lady's expression turned inward and she reached out and turned her hand over to reveal a book.

"This is from the library of the Underground. I can reach that far. I can reach into other realms as well, but it is more costly." She held out the book to the High Lord. "For your researches, Lord Night."

The title stamped across the cloth cover was "Labyrinth" and the author was Sarah Williams.

Before Rhys could say anything, the Seer spoke again. "Be that as it may, I still say clothes shopping is in order. You've no need to dress like a peasant, but even if you will insist, I saw a dress just the other day that Feyre must see. Come along!"

"No," the General said, finally putting his foot down. "Rhys you can't possibly expect us to go dress shopping!"

The Seer whirled on him. "You were  _not_ invited, Cassian. You males can go off and do whatever it is you feel like doing, but I am taking Feyre and Lady Swan and we are going to look at dresses!"

The Seer then turned and grabbed both the High Lady and Lady Swan's arms and made as though to drag them up the street.

The Lady did not move. She stared in horror at her love, standing among two unsmiling Illyrians and one amused High Lord, any of whom could destroy him with scarce more than a snap of their finger, and she would not be there to stop them.

It was the Shadowsinger who saw and seemed able to interpret her distress.

"Your mate will be safe with us, Lady," he said softly, reaching out and, with only the barest of hesitations, laying his hand on her upper arm. "We mean him no harm."

The Lady met his eyes. "If you do," she said softly, so only he could hear, "I will kill you and all of you, and when your war is lost, if you are remembered at all, it will be as oathbreakers who caused your own downfall. Hear me."

"I hear you," he said, "and I know it for truth. Your man will come back to you safe, I swear it on the life of my High Lord and Lady, as well as my own."

The Lady nodded. "Thank you," she said. She looked over his shoulder and met the Captain's eyes. Holding them she touched two fingers of her right hand to the center of her forehead, then to her lips, and then to the place in the center of her chest where, were she any creature but what she was, she would have a heart. He responded with the same gesture, an ancient salute of loyalty and love, and the Lady turned away from him to join the others.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Just a warning for the none of you that are reading this one, I won't be updating next Friday. I'll be on vacation with my sister's family, and explaining why I've gotta get away from family time to format a chapter of fanfiction for posting is... really beyond me.**
> 
> **I'm sure you're deeply disappointed.**
> 
> **Assuming I don't get eaten by an alligator, I'll be back to posting the following Friday. Possibly, if you're all very good, I'll post the next chapter when I get home next Sunday instead, and we'll have two updates in one week (counting the next Friday) but you'll have to say 'please.'**

Azriel and Cassian were both silent, though Rhysand and Hook tried hard to keep something resembling conversation moving.

Cas was still fuming over having to play polite to a creature he considered little better than a goblin, and one that would put on airs besides. He was no diplomat at the best of times, but in such a case, he was downright surly.

Az was a better diplomat, and knew he should be helping Rhysand to make the human feel comfortable, but he could not seem to clear his head enough to do so.

How had a human come to be in the Underground? How could a faerie and a human bond? Even with so low a fae creature as a Changeling- as close to humans as the faeries could be? The Lady said she loved him, and it must be true, but could he really love her? Or was he only under her thrall so that she could keep him always at her side? How could one creature extend their life to another? Did it not go against all the laws of nature?

He wanted to ask, but wasn't sure he could trust the Human's answers. It wasn't that he didn't think the man trustworthy, just… unreliable.

Azriel glanced at him again. He didn't seem entranced. He laughed easily and answered questions intelligently. He was talking to Rhys about dancing.

"I learned to dance in the navy," he said. "We were meant to be diplomats as well as soldiers. I wonder sometimes… it wouldn't have been impossible for me to have gone to the palace in which Swan grew up. The timelines don't line up, but I've always thought, in another world…" He trailed off. After a moment he seemed to come back to himself. "Swan learned to dance as a child, then the Fae Courts robbed her of her love for it. She's relearned it over the years. Our worlds though… I think we might not recognize the dancing common here."

"What do you mean?" Cassian asked.

Hook smiled. "I mean, General Cassian, that I have been to Velaris before, and know the types dancing establishments common here. By the standards of our worlds, they are scandalous, and Lady Swan is a reserved soul. So yes, I would love to take her dancing, but not, I think, here."

"Feyre rarely dances," Rhysand said, "and, like your Swan, would probably not be comfortable in the nightclubs. Perhaps we can come by some music and have a bit of dancing after dinner tonight. Pretend to be great lords of the past and dance in a stately way."

Hook laughed. "You misunderstand me, Lord Rhysand. We needn't be excessively formal, for the dancing on a pirate ship is hardly stately."

Azriel was interested now. "You dance on your ship?"

"Oh aye. It's rare to have a crew without any musical talent, and often we have several pipes and fiddles and even the occasional guitar, and we dance through the dark hours. As Swan is the only lady aboard, every man dances with her. Fortunately, she is tireless. She could dance every man aboard until his feet bled twice and still sing the sun up at dawn."

Cassian gave him a narrow eyed-look. "The changeling can sing?"

"Like a Siren," Hook said, his smile going thin. "And I would appreciate if you called her Lady, Lady Swan, or, if she gives you permission, Swan."

Rhysand cut across Cassian's mutinous look. "You allow other men to dance with your mate? To hold her close so?"

Hook raised an ironic eyebrow. "They do not spend the night in her bed, High Lord. Were I to try to stop them from dancing with her because she is somehow 'mine,' I think they would try to save her from me. Pirates are an egalitarian lot, and you saw how they love her."

"But even early in your bonding, you could let her out of your arms? Let her into another's?"

Hook looked at him a bit confused. "Of course, High Lord. I've met few humans who did not love her, and for me to forbid her their company or embrace… even if I wanted to, I would hardly be able, would I?"

"I don't understand," Rhys said. The four men had stopped on the sidewalk to talk, this conversation being too intense to continue walking. "The early days- years even- of a bonding for us is… it's feral. Bestial. It was hard enough for me to allow Feyre to sit beside Azriel at the dinner table… had he tried to dance with her, I might have torn out my best friend's heart."

Azriel remembered the day well.

"If you'll forgive me, High Lord, humans have worked very hard to overcome their animal natures, and changelings are often much closer to the humans they live among than the faeries who bore them. Perhaps we are just… more civilized."

Azriel held his breath. He had thought the human was affable, and the blade of bitterness and dislike could only come from his Lady, and yet here the man stood, eye-to-eye with Rhysand who could crush him with a single blow, face bland, and insult still ringing in the air.

He had promised Lady Swan that they would do no harm to her mate, but he had promised Rhysand to protect his life against all attacks. Azriel could see no honorable way out of this quagmire and stood tensed, wondering what he would do.

"Perhaps I will request a dance from your Lady Swan this evening," Rhysand said, and far from calming Azriel with his placid words, his silky, poisonous tone only made him more fearful.

Hook did not quail. "You would be most welcome, my Lord. It would be a great honor for you to be accepted by her. Perhaps your Feyre and I can console ourselves by dancing together as well. I've a fine step, and make an excellent partner."

Rhysand growled and Azriel began to suspect that none of them would walk away from this without being bloodied but, oddly, it was Cassian who saved them.

"For the Cauldron's sake, if you idiots must fight, we'd be better served going to the training grounds and having this out like proper males. Az'll be happy to winnow the Captain, if necessary. Or we could fly."

Unlike Azriel, Cassian clearly had no real desire to break up the fight. He sounded downright eager. Still, to Az's pleasure, his suggestion seemed to snap the tension between the Lords of Night and the Underground.

"I suspect," Rhys said, glancing at Azriel as he spoke, "that if Lady Swan found even one out-of-place bruise on our Hook's body, we would all die in pools of our own blood."

"And not quickly," Hook confirmed, sounding cheerful at the thought.

"If we can't beat the shit out of each other," Cassian said, "then I am going to need a drink."

"Aye," the Captain said, lighting on this idea readily. "I think I will join you, and High Lord Rhysand can front the first round."

Azriel agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment, but had an inkling that even a single drink would represent a dereliction of duty in this company.

~?~?~?~?~

Feyre thought she needed to step in before Swan strangled Mor.

It had started out fine enough when Mor had led them into a shop and pointed Feyre toward the dress she'd seen earlier in the week. Both females were highly complimentary when Feyre stepped out of the fitting room wearing it.

"It's perfect for you," Mor said. "If you don't buy it for yourself, I'll buy it for you."

The Lady had been more reserved, but no less flattering.

"You are very beautiful, Lady Night," she said. "The fit is very fine and shows you to advantage." She had then frowned for a long moment at the gown as though looking inside it. "Is it required that the High Lady of Night always wear black?"

Mor and Feyre had exchanged looks.

"No," Feyre said.

"It's expected when representing the Night Court before the other courts, but not other times. I seem to remember the first time Feyre came to our lands, we had her dress in blue most of the time."

Feyre rolled her eyes remembering the harem pants that Mor and Rhys had had her wearing, mostly as a tease.

"I see," the Lady said, clearly unaware of the inside joke.

She stepped forward and laid a hand flat on Feyre's waist. Feyre nearly jumped away, shocked at the intimacy of the hot touch, but then noticed that a minty green color spread from the Lady's hand and covered the dress so that when it was done, the whole dress was the color of a lime ice. The gold detailing on the black dress, which had been dramatic and regal before became suddenly cheerful, like the sun on a perfect spring morning.

Feyre turned back to the mirror and was almost surprised at what she saw there. She had been wearing so much black since becoming High Lady of the Night Court that she had nearly forgotten the way that a delicate color like the green could bring out her eyes and make her look young.

"Persephone," the Lady murmured. "The goddess, not only of the Underworld, but of growing things."

"How did you do that?" Mor asked.

Swan sighed and turned to her. "Lady Seer, if I must teach you to cast a glam-"

"That's not a glamour!" Mor cried. "A glamour is like throwing a curtain over the dress with a drawing of a different dress on it. You've… changed the nature of the dress! I can see it!"

The Lady sighed. "I do not know how to explain it, but such things are different for me! I could not tell those beads to be anything but glass, for glass is their nature. Your glamour could make them appear to be diamond, is that correct?"

"Yes," Mor said, slowly.

"Well, I can't do that. But…. it is not the silk's nature to be black, that was someone else's design. So I can make the silk green instead. I'm not sure how to explain… I cannot alter the nature of a thing, for that would be an untruth. But I can… twist the appearance, like a truth told carefully to avoid a lie, but to present only the face that is wanted." She shrugged. "I cannot say it better than that."

Feyre had hoped that that would be the end of it, but it hadn't been.

First, Morrigan had led the Lady around the shop, trying to get a better idea of what could and couldn't be affected by her glam.

"So you could change the shape of the gown?" she'd asked, pointing at a dress hanging on a form in the back of the shop.

"Yes-" the Lady had said hesitantly.

"I know you could make it red, but could you, for instance, make the sleeves longer?"

"No," the Lady said with a sigh.

"Why not? It's not the nature of the velvet to be short-sleeved."

"But, as we have discussed once today already, I cannot make something out of nothing. Possibly, in theory, I could take some of the skirt and make sleeves from it but there are two problems with that. First, I am not a tailor nor a seamstress. I do not have the artistry for it. Second, any fabric taken out of that skirt and it would no longer be decent."

"So you can't-" Mor began.

The Lady exploded.

"Morrigan!" the Lady cried, freezing both Mor and Feyre in place. "I cannot lengthen the skirt, raise the neckline, add buttons, beads, lace, or satin. If I had every length of silk and velvet in the whole of the Night Kingdom, even then I could not make you the dress you want because I would instead use every inch of it to tie you to that chair so that I could run half-mad back to my ship and my sea and my realm simply to get as far from you as possible!"

"I-" Mor began, but the Lady cut her off.

"If you ask me one more question, Lady Seer," she said, her voice less hysterical, but more dangerous for its recovered calm, "the moment my covenant to your land is broken, I will slap you senseless."

"I wasn't going to ask you a question," Mor said. "I was going to say I'm sorry. You're not here to be interrogated-"

"Am I not?" the Lady cried, clearly still furious. "Are you and your friends not waiting with bated breath for the answer to the question 'will the Lady, the Captain, and the Underground sacrifice all for our war?' 'Why hasn't she yet agreed?' and 'How much longer must we pretend politeness to the monstrous creature?'"

There was another tense silence, then Morrigan asked, "well…  _are_ you going to help us?"

The Lady threw up her hands, turned sharply on her heel and stormed from the shop muttering, "I need a drink."

~?~?~?~?~

Killian couldn't hide his grin as even hardy Cassian balked at the short tumbler of straight rum was set on the table before him. Rhysand looked warily amused and while Azriel remained stone-faced, he lifted the glass to his nose first, as though he thought it might be poisoned, and wrinkled it at the raw alcohol scent.

Killian remembered the day some years ago, under a hot sun in a different sky, sharing a bottle of rum between them, that Swan had called the High Fae "wine sippers." She hadn't meant it as a compliment.

He raised his glass with a challenging smile. "To Velaris, mates. The secret jewel in the crown of the Night Court." He tossed back his rum in a go without even a wince to acknowledge the fiery burn down his throat and in his stomach.

The other males could hardly fail to drink to such a toast, so each picked up their glass, saluted him with it, and took a small sip as though their glasses were filled with vitriol. Cassian made a face like a child being fed spinach. Rhysand wrinkled his nose. Azriel's face betrayed only the slightest disgust by the lines that fanned around his eyes.

"You've made your point, Captain," he said when he swallowed.

Killian shook his head. "I'll have made my point when you've finished that drink," he said, then turned his eyes to Cassian, "and when you refer to my wife with respect," and finally he met Rhysand's jewel-bright eyes, "and you tell me what the hell it is you think you want her for."

~?~?~?~?~

The Lady Swan had been born a faerie and raised a princess and was now mistress of her realm and a pirate queen.

It was this last which was most in evidence as she burst into the nearest drinking establishment in the great city of Velaris. She needed rum, in quantity, and had no interest in trickery, diplomacy, or benevolence to get it.

She swept up to the bar like an approaching storm and grinned a grin that was all menace and sharp white teeth beneath poison-green eyes.

"Rum," she said simply, and then, like an afterthought, "please."

She could read the barman's face like a map. She watched his eyes rake her from head to toe, no doubt taking in her unadorned hair and face, her peasant's clothes, and her old boots. She could only be glad that the Seer's criticisms did not have her barefoot any longer. He must see her human-like form and her faerie eyes, and when his nostrils flared, she knew he took in the scent of old magic and fae blood.

"My establishment has a policy against serving animals," he said with a sneer. "Perhaps you should try near the docks where they have fewer scruples."

The Lady's hand clenched into a fist and she nearly reached through space to draw her sword, but she felt a telltale burning in her palm and stopped.

Damn the stars and the stones, she had taken food from the very hand of the High Lady of the Night Court. Lady Swan could harm no citizen of hers unless they did her harm first. Bruises to her pride did not signify.

Honestly, she should have expected it. High Fae were all the same.

"How dare you?"

Every eye in the place, including Lady Swan's, turned toward the imperious voice from the door.

There, standing backlit by the late-morning light in the street, was the High Lady of the Night Court and the Morrigan, both looking furious, proud, and like the queens they were.

"High Lady Feyre," the bartender gasped, bowing low and nearly braining himself on his own bar. "I-"

He was cut off by the door slamming shut behind the two females. Out of the blinding sunlight, the High Lady of the Night Court was wreathed in ominous shadows, her face blazing like a star. For the first time since Lady Swan had known her, she looked entirely fae, not a scrap of human left in her.

"How dare you?" Lady Night asked again, stepping forward into the room, the shadows following her like loyal pets- eager to do her bidding. "How dare you speak so to my guest? To my  _friend_?"

"Lady Feyre," the barman stammered, "how was I to know-"

"I have many friends," the High Lady said with a cold, cruel smile. "You would have done well to assume that any customer might have the sponsorship of my husband or me. Instead you will have to consider your future, for no more gold from the High Lord's treasury will ever be spent in this establishment." She turned to the Lady. "Come, Swan. We can find a drink somewhere with fewer  _swine_ in residence."

Lady Night looped her arm through Lady Swan's and led her out the door, followed closely by the Seer. Before they could walk off, heads high, Lady Swan turned and slammed the door with all of her surprising strength. Since she hadn't been able to vent her spleen on the barman's person, she would do so on his door.

The High Lady made no comment, only hurried Swan down the street and ducked into a different building. Once inside, Swan could have pinpointed no major difference between this bar and the last, but when the High Lady gave a curt order of "rum all around" to the barmaid, it was filled with efficiency and without animus.

The Lady took her drink in one long swallow, closing her eyes and allowing the fire to numb the edges of her fury and her shame. How had she let herself forget, even for a moment, what she was to these… creatures?

Suddenly there was a quiet rustle of paper, and the Seer's voice said, "here."

Swan opened her eyes to find a small package about the size of her hand sitting before her on the table.

"What-" she began, but the Seer cut her off.

"It's a gift. No… it's an apology, though I'm sorry now that I bought it. If I hadn't we'd have been there with you and that…  _male_ would never have said-"

"Better to have it out in the open," the High Lady said quietly, glaring into her drink.

The Seer glanced at her, then returned her attention to the table in front of Lady Swan.

"It's… well it's a trifle," she said with a shrug. "Go ahead and open it."

The Lady set her fingertips on the paper lightly, then said, also unable to meet the Seer's eyes, "thank you. I-"

"Don't apologize," the Seer cut her off. "You were right. What we're asking of you… it's impossible. It's unfair. It's… we don't even know what it is we're asking because we don't know enough of what's coming and what you're capable of."

"But still you must ask," the Lady said, quietly. "Because it's your world."

"We have to ask because it's our world," the Seer agreed. "But you don't have to say 'yes' because it's obviously not yours."

Swan could hear the confusion and dissatisfaction in the Seer's tone, but she was trying to be understanding, and that was all that Swan could ask of any creature.

She opened the paper and was shocked to find a lovely hair comb made of pale, dark-grained wood inside. The carved figure atop was a swan triumphant- wings spread, neck gracefully arched, eyes beady and bright, even in wood. A smell rose from the item- applewood and beeswax.

"It reminded me of you," the Seer said.

Swan reached out and took the other female's hand.

"Thank you," she said, quietly. "It is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me."

The Seer smiled and lifted her glass in a silent toast to the Lady, then took a drink. The Lady burst out laughing at the expression she made at the taste of the raw rum inside.

"Cauldron boil me, who would drink that?" the Seer asked when she had stopped coughing and gagging.

"Pirates!" Swan said with a grin, and took a long swallow from the cup that had been refilled, and winked at her new friend.

"Humans!" Lady Night said, taking a long drink of her own and smacking her lips in apparent pleasure.

"Heathens!" the Seer declared, but with a grin that would have taken any sting out of the word, had it been there to begin. She pushed her glass over to the Lady and lifted two fingers to get the barmaid's attention. "Wine, please," she said primly, ignoring the laughter of both her companions.

When her drink arrived, she took a long sip and turned to the other two and put the conversation firmly into friendly territory.

"Are you going to wear your new dress to dinner tonight, Feyre?" she asked.

"Thought I would," the High Lady said. "I don't think I've worn anything with color in a week. Rhys' eyes'll pop out of his head."

"He won't recognize you," the Seer said, laughing. "And you, Swan? What will you wear."

The Lady glanced down at herself. "I take it my current attire will not suit?"

The Seer and the High Lady exchanged an amused look.

"We told Cas that he had to dress for dinner. If you came looking like that after he was forced to dress up, well… it wouldn't help you make friends with him, anyway," the High Lady said.

"I suspect your general will not like me unless he is given the chance to beat me senseless, I leave, or I die in your war," the Lady said, not sounding much like she cared one way or the other.

"Cas isn't all bad," the Seer said, though she didn't dispute the Lady's claims. "He's just… tough. Once you get past all that, he's really very sweet."

"There was a world I visited once," the Lady said, thoughtfully. "I encountered a fruit there called a 'thornmallow.' It was prickly on the outside and squishy within."

"Yes, that's our Cassian. He's a thornmallow," the High Lady said.

"Mmm," the Lady said. "They were mildly poisonous and useful in all sorts of rather wicked spellcasting."

The two others were silent for a long moment, then burst out laughing.

"That's Cas to a T," the Seer said, laughing brightly.

The Lady smiled slowly. "Perhaps I will like your general eventually then, if he ever stops baiting me."

"Lost cause then," the High Lady said.

The Lady only smiled.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm back from the wilds of the beach, the tiniest bit tanner, and one pair of specs shorter (they got snatched away by a wave). I spent all of last week with my sister's son, so it seems only appropriate that children make an appearance in this chapter.**
> 
> **Enjoy and thanks for waiting!**

Cassian suspected that it had less to do with serendipity than the mild telepathic connection that Rhysand and Feyre shared when, as he, Azriel, Rhys, and the human approached the townhouse, the voices of the Ladies could be heard coming up the street behind them.

What did strike him as odd was that, far from the mild discomfort in which the males were moving together, the females had their arms linked and seemed to be engaging in amused conversation. Even stranger was that when they came in sight of each other, all six eyes (grey, blue, and unsettling green) found him and the laughter redoubled.

To have Feyre and Mor laughing at him was nothing new, but to see that uncannily lovely face laughing as well put Cassian's temper on the boil.

"They seem to have had a good time," Azriel said, sounding oddly pleased to Cas' surprise. Then again, it wasn't  _him_ they were laughing at.

The human left the group and strode over to the ladies, bowing elaborately to Feyre and Mor and then taking the Changeling's hand and kissing the knuckles. The Changeling's eyes scanned over his face quickly, and one pale eyebrow lifted as though in question.

"I am well," he said in answer to her unspoken query. "Completely unharmed. No need to rain destruction like an avenging angel." He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose.

She wrinkled it in response. "It would seem your new mates took you drinking," she said. "Did you challenge them to dice?"

Hook laughed. "And here was me thinking we were trying to  _avoid_  a diplomatic incident. Why? Did you play cards with the ladies?"

The Changeling smiled and turned her empty hand over his, and there poured from it a stream of wooden counters, causing him to laugh again.

"I take it you won?" he said.

"Sweet Persephone won a few hands. She's a good liar. The Seer has a tell," she answered.

"She keeps saying that," Feyre said, having joined Rhysand, "but I have no idea what it is."

"Doesn't seem fair that a person who can't lie is so good at cards," Mor pouted.

"You'd have won more if you played for gold," the human said wisely, even as he tucked the counters into a coat pocket. "Sharpens a pirate's mind."

The Lady just smiled enigmatically, then glanced up the facade of the townhouse. "What brings us here?"

"This is our home," Feyre said. "We thought it might be time to take a load off. We have rooms prepared for you."

The Lady said nothing, but she did glance briefly at the great palace spire that was visible from all points in Velaris.

"The palace is very impressive, endlessly defensible, and drafty as the pits," Rhys said with a smile. "My house is much more comfortable."

"Though, if you'd prefer the palace, I'm sure places could be arranged," Cassian said, unable to keep the slight note of hope out of his voice. He wouldn't mind the Changeling that far away from him and his.

The Lady barely glanced at him before returning her attention to Rhysand. "Your hospitality is greatly appreciated, Lord Night," she said.

Rhys bowed his head slightly to accept the compliment, and opened the door, stepping back to allow Feyre to take the Lady's hand like a sister and pull her into the house. They were followed quickly by Mor- those three had become bosom friends quickly, Cas noted- then the Human, Rhys, and Azriel, with Cassian taking up the rear.

Cas grabbed Az's arm as the rest of the group followed Feyre's tour through the house.

"Do you trust them?" Cas whispered, glaring into his oldest friend's eyes.

Azriel looked surprised and Cas wanted to shake him- couldn't he see the danger they were all in?

"More than you do, it would seem," Az said, finally. "What's gotten into you, Cas? They've offered us no threat."

"They haven't offered us any help either," Cas said darkly.

"It's war, Cas. Not everyone's as willing to leap into the fray as you are. Rhys'll seduce her to our side. He's good at that. Seducing." Az gave Cas a smirk, clearly wanting his friend to smile and fall back into their usual game of making fun of Rhys. Cassian didn't take the bait.

"She's not a soldier, so what do we need her for?"

Az's smile faded. "Rhys and Amren are sure of her. Why aren't you? You've never doubted the pair of them before."

"They've never forced us to turn backflips to impress an ally before!"

"I've seen no one turn backflips. So far it's been breakfast- which the Lady didn't even eat- a tour of the city, and it will be dinner in the tower later. Do you object so much to being forced to dress like the lord Rhys makes you rather than the monster the others of his class would have you?"

Cassian felt that comment like a fist in the gut.

Az seemed to know he'd struck a blow and pressed his advantage, but gently. "She's like us, Cas," he said gently. "If you're going to cling to that old caste system, you'll have to leave here and go back to the army like it was in Rhys' father's day."

"She's not-"

"Not like us? How?" Azriel asked, angry now. "You've seen her- the way she moves and carries herself. You've heard the way she speaks. You saw how she loves her men and her mate… what about her is less? What are you measuring her on? Wit? Manners? Dignity? Fellow feeling?"

"Some fellow feeling if she's unwilling to come to our aid," Cas grumbled, though Azriel's argument made a terrible kind of sense. It was difficult to release a long-held prejudice.

"You act as though she owes us something. She has every reason to hate the High Fae: they made a weapon of her, then abandoned her when they could not control her. Now, only when they need something from her, do they offer a hand in friendship. Rhys knows this. He's not offended by her reticence. Why are you?"

Cas did not answer. The voices of the rest of their friends were growing louder, they seemed to have finished their tour of the lower floor and were on their way up to the second by way of the stairs before which he and Azriel were standing.

Cas ducked into the little parlor in the front of the house before the rest of the group found him. He heard them pass.

"If there's a book you want and it's not in our personal library, there's a large public library in the city," Rhys was saying. "Are you a reader, Lady Swan?"

"Less than I should be," the Lady answered. "Hook is a great book lover though."

"I couldn't read at all when I first came to Prythian," Feyre said.

Cas was shocked. That was not the kind of information that one gave to near-strangers, and yet there was Feyre telling these two… creatures.

Half an hour later, after Cassian had heard the doors shut above, he heard a light step on the stair. By the time he made it to the door of the parlor, he could only catch the edge of a grey skirt rounding the corner of the hallway toward one of the back rooms. He followed stealthily, and found the Changeling slipping outside into the back garden.

He watched her stroll past the kitchen garden, bend to pluck a leaf from a plant and place it in her mouth before she moved on, deeper into the garden. Once she had vanished, Cassian rushed out and knelt before the plant, sniffing deeply to find...

Spearmint.

He could almost hear Azriel's voice in his head mockingly decrying the horror of a female who would chew a mint leaf.

Cas scowled, turned, and followed the path the Lady had taken deeper into the garden.

There was a great willow tree at the back side of the garden, and he could see her skirts spread on the roots below it, though she was on the opposite side of the trunk from him, and he could not see the rest of her. He did see the movement of one white hand, turning over in the air, and the flash of something silver appearing in the palm.

The hand vanished, but after a few moments, he heard a voice that was not the Lady's voice.

"Mom!"

The voice was young and female, and sounded both happy in the moment, and deeply content with its life. It was lightly accented in a way that Cassian did not recognize.

"Hello, Darling," the Changeling said, and her voice was just as deeply happy as the other lady's.

"Babe, come in here! It's your mom!" the other voice called to a third someone.

After a moment, a third voice joined the previous two, this one male, young, and accented just the same as the Changeling's.

"Mom! We weren't expecting a call!"

"No, I know Kids, I just had a moment and… I missed you."

"We miss you too, Mom," the male voice said.

"You know you guys are welcome home any time," the female voice said. "We're happy to turn over the administration of the Underground to you, you're not stepping on our toes!"

The Lady chuckled. "Is everything going well? I'd have you call me if it isn't-"

"Everything's fine," the female voice soothed.

"The piskies and the goblins are playing pranks," the male voice said, laughter behind it. "It hasn't gotten violent yet, but it is escalating."

"Piskies have short attention spans," the Lady said. "Knock over one of their beehives and they'll be too distracted to provoke the goblins. Convince one of the goblins they're hungry and all will be forgotten."

"We were planning something like that," the female said. "We've got it under control."

"I know you do," the Lady said. "I trust you both completely. Have you heard from your lass?"

"We've got new photos," the male said. "Next time you're home or somewhere a cell phone will work, you'll see them."

"She wants to see us all during her summer break from college," the female voice said. "If you guys are still on the ship, she said she'd split her time between us and you guys. Said it'd be nice to have a cruise."

There was laughter in the voice, but when the Lady answered, hers was deathly serious.

"I'd ask you not to promise her anything," she said, softly.

"Mom?" the male voice asked, fear filling it. "What's wrong?"

The Lady sighed. "I didn't want to worry you but… I'm in Faerie. In the Overworld. With the High Fae."

Both other voices gasped.

"But I thought they hated… us," the male said, hesitating on this last. "Humans and faeries and…"

"Actually no," the Lady said, and her voice was lighter. "The High Fae I'm with now have built a refuge city where humans are welcome."

"Really?" the male asked.

"But what about you?" the female, clearly the shrewder of the pair, asked.

"Ah well, there's the rub," the Lady said. "Me they're less fond of. Downright unpleasant, some of them."

"So why go?" the male asked. "I can't see Hook taking you somewhere you were going to be disrespected."

"No," she agreed, "he wouldn't. And if I gave half a signal, he and the rest of the men would be back on the ship in a twinkling. But it's me they called. It's me they- well, 'want' is the wrong word. And 'me' probably is as well. They want the prophecy."

"The prophecy?" the male asked. "All that stuff that Rumplestiltskin said back when we first met Hook?"

"The very same," the Lady said.

"But it's been ages!" he cried. "More than a century! Why now?"

"There's a war coming. They want me to save them."

"Will you?" the male voice asked.

"Of course she will!" the female voice said.

"There's no 'of course' about it, dear one," the Lady said. "You know how it is with me: I must count the cost. For their war- for their salvation- I might pay a high price, but there are some things I won't give for them."

"Mom-"

"You, my dearests, and your sweet girl, and Hook. Only those would I not pay, but I have an inkling what might be at stake, and I cannot promise I could hold my most valuable treasures back. And if I say yes and begin it, what if I cannot stop if the costs prove greater than I calculated?" The Lady sighed. "I'm learning what I can where I can. I just wanted to warn you… war is coming to Faerie. If I think it must be done, I'll take us all completely away from this realm. People generally can't come to the Underground who wish it ill, but stranger things have happened, so I want you on your guard."

"Yes, Mom," the two voices said in chorus.

"Are you safe?" the female voice asked.

"Hook is with you, right?"

"Yes," the Lady said, a smile in her voice. "He's making friends."

"So he's cheating at dice?"

"Oddly enough, no, apparently. Not yet anyway. Probably not at all, he's trying to be on his best behavior, such as it is."

"First time for everything," the female voice said.

"I should go, my dears. I must dress for dinner, I only wanted to see you. To tell you how much I love you. More than life, my darlings."

"We love you too, Mom. More than anything."

There was a small click and then, faster than should have been possible, the Lady was up, around the tree, and standing dangerously close to Cassian, her green eyes blazing.

"If any threat comes to them," she hissed into his face, her breath smelling sweetly of spearmint, "I will know from whom it came, and you will know the power of my wrath." Then she was storming up the path away from Cassian and back into the house, leaving him blinking in her wake.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Look y'all, I never intended for this to be a story where a relationship happened. When I started writing it, as far as I could tell, all of the relationships already were. Then I got to about this point in the writing and oops... there was a new ship. Not just a new ship, an OT3.**
> 
> **Now, I came up writing crossover ships (RoseLock, anyone?) and I know their faults. Nobody likes them, for instance (except for us losers who do).**
> 
> **I once swore up and down I would never write an OT3 as well because... well... having always been monogamous, I wasn't sure how to go about it.**
> 
> **I'm still not sure, if I'm honest, and yet I have fallen in love with this ship and it's a problem.**
> 
> **(I realize this is all a bunch of spoilers for later in the fic, but since I'm well convinced nobody reads this fic who doesn't already know where this is going, I'm not gonna worry about it.)**

Killian blinked, surprised to find himself awake as he had never intended to fall asleep.

Lady Feyre and Lord Rhysand had led Swan and himself into a fine suite of rooms and left them to themselves. Killian has been telling Swan about his time with the Fae males, sat down in one of the richly upholstered chairs, and could remember nothing else.

Now he woke to find his lady dressing her long sunshine-colored hair at a small vanity, clad only in her chemise.

"You've nearly another hour to sleep, my darling," she said without turning to look at him. "Though I do recommend the bed. Your back would surely thank you."

"Did you put a spell over me to send me to sleep?" Hook asked petulantly.

She did turn to look at him this time, patient affection on her face.

"As though I would have had to go to those lengths. How much sleep did you get last night, my love?"

He considered this. He had slept a brief few hours before coming to the Court of Nightmares, but afterward there had been nothing but talk, arguments, and fear. Add on top of that a trek across the city, a fight with dangerous males, and half a pint of rum, he could see her point. It had not escaped his notice that she had not answered his question directly, but he supposed it didn't matter.

"Should I be concerned that, after having spent much of the day apart from me, my wife seems to have a favor I do not recognize?"

Swan glanced at the fine wooden comb in her fingers, then smiled at him as she turned back to the glass and slid it into her hair.

"It was a gift from the Seer, an apology for having vexed me."

"Even I do not give you a present each time I aggravate you, else I would have spent the last hundred years doing little but shower you in trinkets."

"Have you not?" she asked, a smile deep in her voice. "Perhaps you and I have viewed the last century differently. Your clothes for dinner are on the bed."

Hook pushed himself from the chair and stretched. She was, of course, right: sleeping upright in the chair had done his back few kindnesses.

The suit of clothes waiting for him on the bed were fine, and somehow familiar, but not to his usual tastes at all. They were linen and wool rather than leather, and the coat was a fine golden brown rather than black.

"You are ashamed of being seen with a pirate among the High Fae?" he asked, unsure what was making him so petulant this evening but unable, it seemed, to stop himself.

"An agreement was made among the Ladies not to flaunt our sigil colors," Swan said, not bothering to look at him and answering his tone not at all, "and when I selected my gown, this costume seemed best to suit it." She glanced at the wardrobe, inviting him to look for himself.

Hook opened the door of the wardrobe, and the gown hanging there made him gasp, and he could have sworn that he could smell summer air redolent with the scent of the honeysuckle that grew up the walls of the castle that night.

"Seeing Lord and Lady Night together reminds me of our own early days," the Lady said softly. "Were we so new when-"

"Newer," he said, and his voice was low and rough. He turned to meet her eyes and they were hot as a caress on his. "We'd not even made love for the first time yet."

He remembered it so clearly, though he could have sworn he hadn't thought of that night in decades.

He and Swan had gotten caught up in an intrigue which had involved two lovers whose stubbornness was keeping them apart. Their attempts to solve the issue had forced them to go undercover at a ball in a palace. Like the pirates they were, they had stolen clothes from some royal closet, though they had left gold behind, and with a brief session of magical tailoring had stepped in the front doors as Prince Jareth and Princess Sarah with none the wiser.

That had been the first time they had danced, and Hook could still remember the way his Lady had been stiff and scared in his arms, and the way he had promised her that he would lead and not let her step wrongly.

The rest of the adventure had passed in running for their lives and fighting evil foes, but when they had retreated back to their cabin on the Jolly Roger, Swan had turned her back to him and asked him to undo her laces.

It was the first time she had ever asked- she did not need the help, he knew. She could undress by magic in a twinkling, but he had taken her at her word and slowly released her from her gown of pomegranate red silk.

Beneath, she had worn nothing. No chemise, no stays. As the silk had fallen to the floor like water, he had seen her bare for the first time- hair loose, skin flawless as porcelain, her eyes, when she had turned to face him, glowing in the low light of their room.

"Emma," he had said then, and seen the change that her name in his mouth could cause. Her skin had seemed to glow with the dim silver light of a star. Her nipples had tightened, her legs had clamped together and her cheeks had flushed. Such a little thing, just a name, and yet it had given her pleasure. He had wondered what the touch of his hand would do, and so had reached out to touch that glorious pale skin.

She had told him then that she did not know how, and that she was afraid, and because she had said it, he knew it was true. He had promised her then that he would lead, and she would not step wrongly.

Somehow, as these memories had passed between them, Hook had found himself on his knees before his Lady, seated at the vanity, but turned toward him, his hand cradled between her two, his hook wrapped around her wrist.

"Killian," she murmured quietly, "I am afraid," and he knew why she had chosen these clothes for them to wear tonight.

He opened his mouth to speak, but could not bring himself to say what he had said all those years ago. He could not lead her in this, and he could not promise her that she would not step wrongly. In this, he was powerless.

Instead he kissed the palm of her hand and swore on his knees before her, "I will be beside you every step of the way."

~?~?~?~?~

Azriel and Cassian sat together on the roof of the townhouse in the lowering dark waiting for Rhys, Feyre, and the strangers, lost in their own thoughts.

It was Cassian who broke the silence first, speaking into the twilight.

"Can changelings breed?" he asked.

Azriel was surprised. Not that their minds were in the same place- or at least on the same person- but at the different tracks their thoughts seemed to be taking.

"I mean," Cas continued, as though in answer to Az's silence, "they're found under cabbage leaves in the normal course, and don't often grow to adulthood. But if one did, somehow… and that one found a mate… do you suppose…" He trailed off

"Rhys is doing research into the creatures, ask him," Az said.

Cassian didn't answer this, and they lapsed back into silence.

Azriel was thinking about the Lady as well, though not her potential offspring. He was thinking about something that Cassian had said earlier: 'she's not a soldier.'

It was war they marched toward. Hybern would countenance no other. Lady Swan, upon whom so many hopes seemed to rest, was no soldier.

Azriel had seen that she was brave, difficult to intimidate, and clever. He suspected that she was lethal and cruel.

All these things are necessary, in some measure, to be a soldier, but the hallmark of a warrior is his steadfastness- his patience. War is a long, tedious prospect, and the lesser faeries are not known for their tolerance of tedium.

He wondered if they would be forced to extract a promise from her lips that she would not abandon their cause in the middle. Her word was her bond, and perhaps the only way to keep her in their ranks and assure that she saw them through to victory.

His musings were interrupted by cheerful conversation at the entrance to the roof, and Azriel stood to greet his Lord and Lady.

Rhysand did not insist on such ceremony, and Feyre would have found it stifling if she'd noticed, but there was something inside Azriel that insisted on formality. Perhaps he wasn't so different from Cassian after all: for all Rhys had made a lord of him, he still felt the need to prove he was worthy of it.

With a jolt, Az realized this might account for Lady Swan's careful reserve, and her calculated dignity. Her grace was innate, but her coolness was clearly not, as they had all seen aboard her ship. Perhaps she, too, felt she needed to prove that she deserved her place among the High Fae.

Rhysand and Feyre appeared first. As ever, Rhys wore night black, though his wings were on display this evening. Feyre was dressed in green as bright and fresh as the first shoots of spring, reminding Azriel of the Lady's story of the flower maiden turned Queen of Death.

Swan and Hook followed close after them. It was Hook who was laughing. The Lady smiled and listened, as cautious as ever.

The pirate was dressed this evening as a prince, and the Lady…

Azriel's heart gave a hard bump to see her, and he cursed himself for ten kinds of fool. Why, he wondered, was his heart always for those he could never have?

The four rulers arranged themselves at the edge of the roof, looking out toward the mountains, though Az saw both Swan and her pirate look back toward the sea.

"The tower is unreachable by any manner but air," Rhys was explaining. "My brothers and I offer our wings to you as a carriage, if that is amenable to you both?"

Azriel calculated the offer as half challenge. Hook had taken a jab at his pride, and the Lady had given him only the barest of attention, preferring, it seemed, his wife.

Contrary to what Rhys might have hoped, neither of his guests seemed perturbed by the thought of flight.

"Feel free to fly your lady yourself, High Lord," the Lady said with a smile. "She would, no doubt, prefer no arms to yours."

"And what of you, Lady Swan?" Rhys asked. "Will you allow Cassian to escort you through the air?"

"I think Cassian would be better served carrying me," Hook said, stepping up to the general again giving him a dazzling smile which was hard and sharp as a diamond. "Less likely to get himself in trouble."

"How do you calculate that?" the Lady asked her mate, sounding amused. "The Lord General's animus toward me is sure strong enough to drop you to the rocks below for my sake."

"Ah," Hook said, chucking her under the chin fondly with his hook. "But if he does so, it is  _you_ he will face in revenge, and you are far more lethal a foe than I, my dearest love."

The Lady smiled serenely. "You speak true enough."

Cassian swallowed hard as he looked from the Lady's face to Hook, and then to Rhysand.

"I'll not stand between you two if you harm her mate, old friend," Rhys said with a smile. "Surely you know how I value my own skin." He turned toward the Lady. "And you, Lady Swan? You will accept the escort of Azriel?"

"Your brother and I will do well enough, Lord Night."

"Then I shall take my Lady and my leave and see you again at the palace," Rhysand said, with a shallow bow to the three of them.

He lifted Feyre like a bride and stretched his powerful wings wide as he prepared to take off.

"I wonder," the pirate said, leaning close to his Lady and speaking softly, though still loud enough for every High Fae to hear, "whether there is a correlation between wingspan and…" He trailed off, though the insinuation in his voice was clear.

"I am sure that males will claim it, whether it is there or not," the Lady said. "Though the females are likely to have a better idea on the matter."

Rhysand did not look back as he took off, but Feyre was laughing into his chest.

"And will you carry me like a lass to bed as well?" Hook asked Cassian once they were gone.

"You'll be lucky if I don't throw you over my shoulder," Cas said. "That's if your Lady goes off with Az and I don't have to worry she'll throw me into the sea for doing it."

"And he remains so impertinent, you have my blessing Lord General," the Lady said.

Hook laughed, and Cassian looked shocked. Even Azriel couldn't help but smile.

He stepped forward to the Lady, gave a short bow, and extended his hand. "Perhaps we should leave these two to fight as they will, Lady Swan?"

The Lady gave him a warm smile which shot to his gut and made him wish on one hand that he had never met her, and on another, that he had met her a century before.

"As you say, Lord Shadowsinger," she said, then stepped past him without taking his hand.

"There is no way to the tower save through the air, Lady," Azriel said. "I'm afraid I shall have to carry you."

The Lady shot him a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. "Your wings need not strain on my behalf, Illyrian. Mine will do well enough."

"Your wings-" Az began, but before he could get another word out she turned away from him. He noticed, in the instant she turned, that her hair ornament was a pale wooden carving of a swan in flight, then she seemed to shift weirdly and he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, for where she had stood an instant before there was a swan in just the same position- wings spread, neck curved gracefully. It looked over its shoulder just as she had done, and he saw that its eyes were green, not black.

Its great wings pushed down, and with a musical trumpet it rose into the air, white as a ghost against the blue-black of the sky. It circled them once, then turned in the direction of the tower with a joyful cry.

"An angel," Hook said softly, unknowingly echoing Azriel's thought. The pirate turned toward Azriel with an ironic brow raised. "My Lord Azriel, I understood you were my wife's escort. She's gotten away from you, it would seem."

Az shook his head, realizing the man was right, and stepped off the edge of the roof and into the wind, his own wings catching it and carrying him up after the Lady who was an unending fount of surprises.

He caught her up in the air. A swan is built for stamina- for the endless migration from one end of the world to another- not for speed. She was smaller than he was though, and more agile with it, and when he might have caught her she rolled and turned and vanished from before his eyes. Azriel too rolled and turned and followed after her in a merry chase, laughing as she trumpeted.

As they approached the tower, Azriel thought of the violent updrafts that batter the spire, and wondered if her light bones and feathers would be thrown about. She was not- when she reached those drafts she caught them on her wings and allowed them to lift her higher and higher. Azriel watched as she was silhouetted against the moon- purer white, but with her edges seeming to bleed into it, as though she might disappear into the light of the night sky.

Then she was beyond the updraft and diving perilously and Az dove after her, afraid she had lost control completely. He could count the tiles on the balcony of the tower and had reached out to catch her when, at the final instant, she turned her wings to slow her fall and dropped graceful to the floor, a woman again.

Azriel, who hadn't expected it, landed with far less dignity- stumbling and finally catching himself against the railing.

"I'm sorry," the Lady said, coming to him and taking his arm to help steady him. "I was enjoying myself far too much, I didn't think."

She was all rustling red silk and the smell of apple blossoms and those uncanny green eyes. Azriel forgot where he was, who he was, and what she was. All he wanted, in that moment, was to kiss her.

Cassian saved him by landing with a shout just before Azriel could act on his mad impulse. He and the pirate were laughing. The Lady let go of Az's arm to smile at the newcomers, giving Az room to breathe again.

_Get your head on straight, fool_ , he said to himself, angry.  _She could no more be yours than Feyre, and far less than Morrigan._

He felt an odd gratitude toward the Changeling for having finally turned his head from the fruitless pursuit of Mor. But if his freedom would be bought by the pursuit of someone even less attainable, he found it difficult to be best pleased.

For an instant, he envied the Changeling her heartless state.

"Come in now, you lot," Rys called from inside the room. "Dinner is served."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not sure how interested you are in a peek behind the curtain, but this entire fic was finished being written when I started a re-read of A Court of Thorns and Roses and, having written an entire story from the perspective of a lesser faerie like the Puca or Bogge, I found myself deeply offended and decided to add some serious Fae Politics to this chapter.**
> 
> **It was... A Choice.  Not necessarily one I regret.  But definitely one I made.**
> 
> **Next week we (finally) get sexy.**

Amren sipped slowly from her goblet and watched the revelry of the younger set with an amused eye.

Cassian hated Swan. Azriel lusted after her. Rhysand couldn't understand why he hardly seemed to signify to her even as he and her mate seemed determined to rip one another to shreds on the blades of their wit. Morrigan remained wary of Swan. Feyre was like a child with a favorite aunt- desperate for her attention.

The girl herself appeared serene as ever, but Amren suspected that her ignoring Rhysand and baiting Cassian and keeping Mor wrong-footed were her attempts to keep them from pushing her for a decision about saving their world. She was like a child who hoped that if she didn't look at the monster, it wouldn't see her.

Rhys thought he was a monster, but Amren  _knew_  that she was.

"Rhysand," Amren said loud enough to cut through the disparate conversations around the table, and with enough power behind it that every eye found hers in an instant. "Why don't you tell us about your war?"

Rhysand looked surprised, and the Lady looked pale. Feyre frowned.

"It's not… not yet, Amren. Not over dinner," she said. "Swan and Hook have only just arrived. There's time yet-"

"No, High Lady," Swan said quietly. "Amren is quite right. It's past time that I knew. You want me for a weapon, it is best I know what target I am meant to be aimed at. High Lord, tell me of this war you think I might win for you."

Rhys, never the sort of male to waste his chances in the arena of strategy, began to speak.

He told the Lady of the history of Prythian, the old war, and how Hybern had taken the stalemate in the wake of it. He told her of Amarantha, and her forays onto their continent, and how he had understood them to be the precursor to yet another attempt at war. He did not balk at explaining why his own peers- the other High Lords of Prythian- might not come to his aid.

Feyre, seeming to notice that the Lady seemed unsurprised by any of this news, interrupted her mate.

"Did you know about her? About Amarantha?"

"Why should I have?" the Lady asked, not answering the question at all.

"Your people sided with her," Cassian said.

"Did they?" she asked.

"They did," Feyre said, and anger flashed across her face toward the Lady of the Underground for the first time that Amren had seen. "She sent them into the Spring lands while I was there. They were her soldiers."

"And did your Spring Lord arrest them like soldiers?" the Lady asked, and now there was temper in her face as well. "Did he attempt a prisoner's exchange, try to give life-for-life. Surely there were those that she kept bound that he must have wanted freed?"

"N-no."

"No! Your gentle Spring Storm slaughtered my people without prejudice. Yes, I knew of your troubles because the population of  _my_ lands exploded. The Low Fae in Prythian, knowing that their choices were to be trampled by the oncoming war or turned to cannon-fodder wished themselves someplace safe, and my doors were open to them. I heard the screams of torment coming from your mountain, and I protected them."

"You knew and you did nothing?" Rhys whispered.

"My people were tortured and killed, and I know by whom, Lord Night," the Lady said, her voice icy and dangerous. "I heard their screams and their torment and I saved them. Why then should I wade into a fight that was yours? Why should I have saved their torturer?"

Rhysand's face was white with fury, but he did not speak.

"Could you have stopped her?" Feyre asked.

"Yes," the Lady said, no longer bothering to cloak her answers. "But do not waste time wishing I had done it, for you do not. To begin, who's to say I would have taken your side in that war? I could have collapsed the mountain atop all of you and left  _my_ people to rule Prythian. There is nothing like having lived beneath the boot for a millennium for fomenting revolution, wouldn't you say, High Lady?"

"What?" Feyre asked.

"You should have studied your people's history better. Humans have always been brilliant at building societies on the backs of disposable people, only to have those disposable people rise up against them. It's one of the things the High Fae always respected and feared about you."

"They never feared us."

The Lady laughed, a sharp, barking, cruel sound. "Of  _course_ they do, my Lady! Your people are imaginative, clever, creative, and cruel as even the High Fae don't know how to be."

"We were their  _slaves_."

"Yes, and the slaves rose up and fought back. They claimed their lands and their freedom. Do not think a partial victory is no victory.  _We_ never even had that much. We were but the rats and cockroaches and termites in their floorboards. So much vermin to be slaughtered en masse."

"Feyre was kind to the lesser faeries," Amren said softly. "She showed them mercy."

"Yes," Swan whispered, her eyes finding Feyre's again. "I heard of a human girl who was merciful to my kind. It was a quiet whisper in my land, so soft that it might have been naught but a fairy tale, and yet…"

And yet, she did not have to say, she was here. She had not turned her back on their request to help them in a war which was, yet again, not hers to fight.

"Do not wish I had entered your war in those days-" the Lady said softly, eyes never leaving Feyre's, "-for I'd never have taken the side of the High Fae, though not Amarantha's side either. Bless the stars she came and I did not, else you'd never have met your sweet Lord Hades. You would be human still; not Persephone but Cinderella with her negligent father and wicked sisters."

Feyre's mouth hung open in shock. Before she could gather herself, the Lady turned her attention to Rhysand again.

"So what is it you think I can do, High Lord? What is it you think I  _would_ do?"

Rhysand looked like he wanted to say something- defend his people, but he could not seem to find the words. Finally, he explained how he suspected that their enemies had the Cauldron and its power of creation, and how it could build them an endless army of the dead.

The Lady let him speak, her green eyes on him steadily, her face giving nothing away.

"So we shall face an army of the undead without allies, without weapons, without hope," Rhys concluded. "Unless you stand among us."

"Tell me, High Lord," the Lady said, and they could hear the cold fury in her voice as she spoke. "What is it you think that I will do for you before this army of the undead?"

"The prophecy says you have the power-"

" _Power_." She spat the word like it was filthy. "Aye, Lord, I have power."

She lifted her wine goblet from which she had not drunk and narrowed those lucent green eyes at it for a long moment. Steam began to rise from the goblet and they could hear the wine boiling inside. Suddenly Mor gasped and looked at her own goblet where the wine was boiling away as well. Each guest at the table looked, and each had their wine boiling, though the Lady had not even looked at them.

"Sympathetic magic," the Lady said, setting her glass down where it steamed gently, filling the room with the smell of hippocras. "Boil the blood of one, and I can boil the blood of all. Is that what you wish, High Lord? For me to destroy your enemy in a single stroke? To kill 100,000 in a moment?"

"Yes," Rhysand said, his voice breathless.

"No," the Lady said, her voice final.

"But-"

"The High Fae believe that they are made of spirit. Humans believe the same, and that when they die that spirit lives on. There is another life for you. Not so for me. The Old Ways have no heaven, no hell, no second chances. Changelings are made of malice and magic and the shadows and dirt beneath a cabbage leaf. There is no spirit to live on after I die, I have only this one life, and in it  _I do not kill_."

"But to save the world-"

" _Your_  world, High Lord,  _yours_. You are so blinkered by your own experience that you forget every moment that yours is not the only world. The end of this reign matters not at all to the stars above or the worlds beyond. You wish me to spare one world in a hundred-thousand. A world which, I remind you, is  _not my home_. For this world you ask me to commit genocide, and I say no."

"You have the power to unmake the world and you will not help us?"

"I have the power to unmake the world," the Lady said, and the color in her face which had ridden so high just moments before fell away, leaving her deathly pale. "I could pick apart each stitch in the tapestry of this world, and would do so gladly before I killed even a single soul. You want me to be your assassin, your weapon, so that your hands remain clean? So that your kingdom remains whole? What happens when I return to my own home- only a wish away? Can I rule in peace over my people when I have given myself over to death? Could I take my lover to bed knowing what my hands have wrought? Could I touch my children? Your Lady could tell you what it is to kill."

Amren blinked in surprise. Changelings could not have children.

"I do not ask anything of you that I am not willing to do myself," Rhysand whispered.

"But you do, High Lord. You come to me because I am a monster that can kill more indiscriminately than you can imagine. You think that is power, High Lord, but it is not. Power is in knowing that I can crush your skull without coming near you, and knowing that I will not."

"You can unmake the world," Amren said, suddenly. "Can you unmake the Cauldron?"

For the first time in some minutes, the Lady and Rhysand looked away from each other, and eyes green and violet found Amren.

"What?" they both said together.

"The Cauldron," Amren said, frowning as she worked through it. "It is the source of all of Hybern's power, and without it what have they got? Even if they still wanted a war, it would take them a thousand years to build up the army for it." She looked at Rhysand. "We wouldn't need a prophecy to fight a war with a thousand year warning."

"Unmake the Cauldron," the Lady said, frowning at the thought.

"Have you unmade before?" Amren asked.

"The prophecy-" Rhys began.

"If you do not shut up about that thrice-damned prophecy, I shall throw you off the balcony myself," Amren said. "Could you do it?" she asked the Lady, quietly.

"What do you mean, unmaking?" Mor asked, the first to find the courage to speak.

The Lady frowned, but she reached forward to a bowl of fruit in the middle of the table and drew out one large, red apple. She held it up so they could all see it, and looked at it so closely she seemed to look within it. Then she whispered a word and the apple changed.

Amren wondered if any of the others could see it as she did- she saw each strand that made up the apple glow golden, then begin, one by one, to disappear, unraveling. It took only a moment, and then the apple was gone.

"What-" Rhys began, then frowned. "What?" he said again, this time a different tone, confused and wrong-footed.

"Does anyone remember a red apple in this bowl of fruit?" the Lady asked.

Amren remembered, but no one else at the table did.

"You don't remember because it was never there. It never arrived in this bowl of fruit. The branch on the tree in the orchard from which it came never flowered- not this year. No apple was ever there," the Lady explained.

"And you could do that to the Cauldron?" Mor asked, voice hushed.

"Old magic always comes with a price," the Lady said, not answering Mor's question. "To unmake an apple- something simple, which makes no difference and changes the tapestry of the world not a whit, do you know what I paid? I gave the name of my father. My human father. He was a good man- the prince consort of a country very far from here. He had blue eyes, and a kind smile, and I will never remember his name again."

Her eyes found Rhysand's and she stood from the table, imperious. "To unmake your Cauldron would cost the highest price. Even I do not yet know what it is. And, simply put, Lord Night, I have not yet decided if you are worth it."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **You're off the edge of the map, here there be sexy times.**
> 
> **Also, one of my favorite characters from OUAT to write for.  He's just so nasty and malicious!**

There was no dancing with the Court of Dreams that night. After the Lady had her say, she flew away out the dark windows, lost in the night sky in a moment, for all her glowing whiteness.

Cassian carried Hook back to the townhouse in silence. The High Lord and Lady remained in the tower, but Hook had no desire for their company.

He could not be sure that Swan had returned to the townhouse. If she was not there, he would next go to the Jolly Roger. If not there, he would wish himself to the Underground.

She was in their room, seated on the floor with her silk skirts spread around her like a pool of blood.

Hook crossed and knelt before her, taking her face into his hand and hook.

"We can go even now," he said softly. "Go into the city and round up the men, leave in the Jolly by dark of night. Put this place to the rudder and never look back. You owe them  _nothing_."

"Amren has put it into my head that I could stop this war before it begins," she said, her voice soft and high. "If I do not, is all the blood of the war not on my hands?"

"It is not," he said definitely. "This is not your war, Emma."

She met his eyes, and if she were as human as she looked, they would have been full of tears.

"Would you have me go, Killian?" she asked. "Would you have me run and leave these to their fates? I'll do it if you say and never count the cost, for it is your neck in the noose as much as mine."

He could not tell her to go. She was proud and valiant and honorable, and he could not ask her to be a coward for his sake.

"Tell me to run, Killian," she whispered, begging. "Tell me to put these creatures to my back and go home to Henry and Jacinda and Lucy and hold them close and forget I ever knew the Lord and Lady of Night."

"I can't. I know you too well, sweet Emma," he murmured against her lips. "The dead would haunt your dreams for the rest of our days."

"I'll stand it," she said. "I'll stand it if you are the only price that can be paid. If there is an alternative… I may do it for them, but if your life is the only coin by which I will buy their freedom, I will be a miser and hoard all my treasure to me. I swear it my love."

"You need not swear to me. We've had a hundred years, my Emma. So much more than some. A hundred years of sea and stars and magic and love. We've had our reward."

"I'm not ready for it to be over."

He smiled, though tears nearly choked him. "You never are, Sweet. Not until the moment comes, you're never ready."

She did not answer him, just pulled him to her and kissed him. She kissed him like it was the first time… or the last. She kissed him as though she had no words to express all that she felt and wanted and was, and he kissed her back because he understood.

"Take me to bed, Killian," she said pulling back from his mouth only enough to be able to speak. "Take me to bed and let me forget for a moment."

Killian smiled against her lips. "And I do my job properly, you'll forget longer than a moment, Sweet."

He stood and offered his hand to help her to her feet, then moved to her back and, like the first time, he began to unlace her red silk gown.

He kept his movements steady and unhurried, allowing the tension to grow as he drew each ribbon through each hole in a deliberate fashion.

As he undressed her, he talked.

"I remember the first time I saw you," he murmured, backgrounded by a soft shush of silk against silk. "I wondered if your skin would be cold to the touch. That's how it looks when we're in the Underground- your magic sits on your skin like silver gilt. Like frost. Now I know that your skin blazes so hot, sometimes the only thing that can soothe it is my tongue."

He reached the bottom of the laces and stepped away so that the dress could fall away, just as it had the first time, leaving her bare.

"The next time I saw you, you were a swan at first," he said, plucking the comb from her hair and letting it fall golden and glorious down her back. "Do you recall telling me that only humans have access to the greatest magic in all the realms, love?"

"I hadn't the experience to know better," she said softly as he brushed her hair aside and laid his lips on her neck and shoulder, drawing his hand up her belly and cupping her breast.

"You remember the first time you wore that dress," he whispered into her ear before he took the lobe gently between his teeth. "You were so frightened. I'd never seen you scared before."

"You had," she gasped as he drew the tip of his hook around her other nipple, then down her side slow and gentle until he came to her hip.

"I didn't know it then," he said. "You were so frightened, but you were so wet too." His hand began to travel back down her stomach, lower and lower as he spoke. "You were wet and slippery with wanting then. Ah, just like that. Like a summer-ripe peach."

She gasped with each of the last three words.

"That's my girl," he murmured, and sunk his teeth into the skin at the join of her shoulder and throat.

"Killian," she whispered, and he grinned.

"I like my name in your mouth," he said. "I like the way you gasp it."

He moved his fingers just so and she gave a short, half-sobbing gasp.

"My name, Emma," he growled. "Say it."

"Killian," she said, half swallowing it as he moved his fingers again and she let out a cry.

He turned her and pressed her into the wall, his hand found her center again, and he looked her in the eyes.

"Azriel is in love with you."

"He thinks he is," she said gasping as he continued to pump his fingers inside her and flick his thumb over her in a manner honed by a century of practice.

"Now now, my dear," he said, grinning a wolf's grin down at her, "don't correct me. I know what it looks like when a man is in love with you. I've seen the look in my own glass day in and day out for many years. He doesn't know though. Doesn't know anything but the buttoned-up girl you are in front of them. He doesn't know what it's like under your skirts. Between your legs."

He began to unlace his trousers with his hook- so many years of practice, and he could manage it nearly as dextrously as his hand. His cock was freed in a trice, and he reached around his Lady to lift her.

"Killian, your clothes!" she said, half scandalized, but lust-drunk all the same.

He lowered her onto him and pinned her to the wall.

"You dressed me as a prince tonight, but have you forgotten I'm a pirate?" he murmured against her ear. "I'll fuck you as I like, clothed or not, and you'll take what's given you like a good girl, won't you my Emma?"

Seated inside her, with his preparations, her name on his lips set her peak off without another thing need done, but Killian was far from finished.

"Don't shout," he whispered into her ear. "The High Lord and Lady might hear, and it's no one's to know but ours how the Queen of the Underground likes to be fucked. Keep quiet, my Emma, and we'll make royalty of one another tonight."

He hitched her slightly higher against him and he began to move- not so slow anymore. Not so deliberate. He was stripped raw by the night and by her. He could not be more vulnerable if she had flayed his skin away. If she had reached into his chest and drawn out his still-beating heart, she could have no more control over him.

Her thighs clenched around him like he was a horse she would guide, but he took no instructions from her. Even when she began to chant his name with quiet, begging pleas interspersed.

"I do love to hear you beg, my Emma, but it's my turn now," he said.

She gasped incoherently, and he grinned wide and feral.

"That doesn't mean stop. Say my name again, Sweet."

"Killian."

"Aye, Love, just like that."

Deep inside of her she clenched so hard on him that he could barely move, but he did not stop pushing her through it until, right at the end, he couldn't hold his control any longer and spilled into her with a long groan of her name.

He let her down slowly. When her legs were settled under her, however, he knelt on one knee before her, supplicant before his queen.

"Killian, what-" she began.

"I promised you would not think for some time, my Lady," he said with a grin up to her. "I've not finished yet."

~?~?~?~?~

Emma rose from her rumpled bed some hours later and resumed her clothes. Not the red silk gown still crumpled on the floor, but her plain skirt and shirt.

Killian had served her well, and when she had reminded him that her request had been to be taken to bed, he had leaned against her thigh and laughed.

"A dereliction on my part, Love," he'd said.

"No," she'd answered. "On mine."

She had led him to the bed, undressed him slowly, and made love to him, first with her hands, then her mouth, then, finally, when he had been straining and swearing, she had taken him into her body again.

"Gods, Emma," he had groaned as she had slid down onto him, inch by tortuous inch. "The heat of you. Like making love to a star."

The feel of him. The way he was so human- she could smell his bitter sweat and the sea-salt of his seed, the way she could feel his heart thundering under her hands as she rode him, the way the skin around his eyes took on fine lines as he closed them, trying to hold out. She took his hook and pressed the cold metal to her clit as she rode, it was soothing and stimulating, and once again reminded her of how human-fragile he really was. He sobbed her name just an instant before she flew.

Now he slept deeply having served her with all his heart. Emma bent over him and kissed his temple.

"I love you, Killian," she whispered, "more than all the world."

Then she left their room.

She moved on silent bare feet through the townhouse, able to see in the dark with her strange faerie eyes. She made her way to the roof which was lit like noonday by the great pregnant moon and the wide sea of stars which sang and danced in her fae perceptions.

She stood for several long moments, only breathing the starlight, then she spoke softly into the dark.

"Come to me, Rumplestiltskin, I have need of you."

He might have been waiting for her call, so quickly did he appear in a puff of red smoke.

"Lady Underground," he said with a crooked smile and an elaborate bow. When he straightened he looked about curiously. "I perceive we are not in the Underground, Lady. In fact, we would appear to be in the finest jewel of the crown of the Kingdom of Night, Velaris."

"You're too clever by half, Dark One," the Lady said.

"It is how I stay alive," the Dark One agreed. "So tell me, Orphan, what brings you to the Starry Court? And, more important, what is it brings  _me_ here? Stands the Night Triumphant in wait in the shadow to finally do away with me?" The imp seemed un-worried at the idea.

"The High Lord is in bed with his new High Lady," Swan said. "They have no attention to spare our conversation, fear not."

"You speak so disparagingly of the marriage bed when I can smell the human's seed on you."

The Lady lifted one blonde eyebrow in surprise. "If we are going to be so rude as to sniff each other like dogs, then I will congratulate you on your own marriage, Dark One. Does your wife not object to you leaving her bed to come to my call?"

"My wife is no concern of yours."

"As my husband is none of yours."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Dearie. Your husband made himself my concern when he stole away my first wife."

"Nearly four-hundred years ago," the Lady said, shaking her head. "And you still can't let it go, Rumple?"

"What is it you want of me, Emma?" he asked, biting off the last word as though it tasted foul.

"Have you ever flown before?" she asked.

The Dark One blinked in surprise at this apparent non sequitur. "I beg your pardon?"

"I need a question answered," she said. "Honestly. Without tricks or obfuscations. I want a simple answer, and I will pay for it by giving you wings for a night so you can know what it is to fly among the stars. Will you accept my terms?"

"You haven't the power to give me wings without paying a price."

"I have counted the cost."

The Dark One stood for a long moment staring out into the darkness, considering.

"May I know the question first?"

The Lady looked at him for a long moment as though considering the benefits of telling him, then shrugged.

"I am asked to unmake the Cauldron."

The Dark One's crocodile eyes went wide. "The Cauldron?"

"Aye," the Lady said with a breath of humor. "The one from all the songs and stories. It would seem the fate of the world depends on it. My question then is this… what must the price be? Will anything short of his heart and mine allow it done?"

The Dark One frowned for a long moment, then nodded. "I take your terms, Lady. One night to fly in the starlight, and I'll give you your answer." He gave her a sharp look. "You know you may not like it?"

The Lady smiled coolly. "There is a reason I am asking the question before I do the deed," she said. "If I like not the answer, this world may hang."

"May it?" the Dark One asked, disbelieving. "We shall see. Now, your part of the bargain?"

The Lady nodded and held up her left hand. On it was a band of hammered gold which she drew off and held in the center of her right hand. By weight of gold, it was worth very little, but it had sat on her hand for a hundred years and represented her husband's love for her. It was a symbol of their past and their future, and for this it was priceless.

Still, the Lady closed her fist around it, and when it opened again there was nothing but glittering dust in her hand which she blew gently over the Dark One.

When the dust cleared, where the Dark One had stood there was, in his place, a proud red hawk, glaring about with a dark and deadly eye.

"You are rather handsome like this," the Lady said with a smile as she bent to allow him onto her hand so she could lift him to the bannister. "I can see why Amren likes you so much."

Without another word, she transformed into a swan, and the two took off into the moonlit dark.

Hours later, after the moon had set, and the sky in the east showed just the barest lightening of the blue-black that indicated dawn was near, the hawk and the swan returned to the roof and transformed back into their own forms- a Lady and a Demon.

"That was," the Demon said near-reverently, "extraordinary."

"Yes," the Lady said simply. "It is a joy."

The two stood silent for a long moment, then the Lady turned to the Dark One. "Have you my answer, Imp? I cannot guarantee your safety if you are found by the High Lord's court in the daylight."

He snorted irreverently. "I have faced more dangerous foes than Rhysand's pet Illyrians, but yes, I have your answer." He turned from the great stretch of Velaris under the sky, and instead looked straight at the Lady, eyes unwavering.

"The trouble you find yourself in is not the Cauldron itself," he began. "The Cauldron is large and powerfully magical, but in the end it is only an object, and you have unmade objects before. The price for that act alone will be lower than you fear. Perhaps only your left eye, or your right hand, or your granddaughter's granddaughter. A fair price, as such things go."

"Perhaps not so fair if my granddaughter's daughter were asked," the Lady said.

The Dark One waved this away. "The real trouble is this: the Tapestry."

"How so?"

"In general, when one unmakes, it is a piece within the great Tapestry, and is little noticed for the whole remains strong. Even a great unmaking, though it might warp the weaving, will not unravel it fully. The Cauldron is different though. It is the beginning of the cloth- the selvedge edge. If you unmake it, the tapestry will begin to unravel immediately, and the world will unmake."

The Lady was pale in the starlight. "Can I stop it?" she asked softly.

"The prophecy says you can, but for this the cost will be terribly high."

"His heart," she whispered.

"Perhaps," the Dark One said. "But the prophecy names you homeless, an orphan. But you are no longer that anymore, are you? You have a home. If you paid that home as your price, and resumed your orphan state, I think the prophecy may be fulfilled."

"This is not merely a matter of abdicating my throne," the Lady said.

"No, child. The Underground will be destroyed, and all that remain in it killed. You will never be able to go back, nor will anyone be able to claim it as refuge again."

"It is a terrible price," she said.

"Aye, Lady. Is it worth it?"

~?~?~?~?~

Killian woke as Emma returned to his bed smelling of the night.

He pulled her into his arms as she slid between the sheets, her skin warm even coming in from the cool dark. He was hard and ready for her again, but he did not attempt to inflame her.

"What did you learn, my love?"

"I might save you," she whispered, rolling to face him, her eyes glowing in the dark. "But it will cost all else."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **It was my first week of classes, so I have nothing fun to say this week, I'm completely sapped.**
> 
> **If you're a student at college or university, please be nice to the librarians. They are _so tired,_ and you are _so much._**
> 
> **(I do actually love the students, even when they're being entitled little shits.)**

Rhysand was no lover of early rising. Was he not, he had asked time and again, the Lord of  _Night_?

Since the addition to his evening routine of making love to his dear young wife, and her presence in his bed still unclothed each morning, he found early mornings even more objectionable.

He had, however, lived in his home for centuries and knew its sounds as well as he knew the breath in his own lungs. He could feel the wrongness about the morning as the first fingers of sunlight made themselves known over the mountains and so the Lord of Night forced himself to greet the dawn.

On the roof, he found the issue. It would appear that his guests were attempting to kill each other, and his best friends had arrived to watch.

Hook and Swan were in the practice ring, swords flashing quick and furious. Hook fought two-handed with cutlass and hook. He was stripped to the waist, the hair on his chest matted with sweat, tattoos gleaming. The Lady wore the same skirt and shirt she had worn the previous day, was again barefoot, and fought with a longsword and no shield. She was quick as a snake, in spite of her restrictive skirts, and she seemed not even to be breathing hard.

Cassian and Azriel stood watching the pair as though they were on stage, though their entertainment gave them no mind in the slightest.

"What is going on?" Rhys asked. Drawing closer he could see that the fight was not really a fight, but exercise. When one combatant struck a blow, they only touched the other with their blade and said "hit" rather than striking. It appeared to Rhys that the Lady was making all the hits at the moment.

"We've been here nearly an hour," Az said, not taking his eyes off the battle. "They'd already begun when we arrived."

"He must be tiring," Cassian said, narrowing his eyes at the pair.

He clearly was, as Rhys could see. When he lifted his cutlass again, his arm shook as though his muscles were fatigued. The Lady ducked under his slow blow in a trice, turned him around and had him in a hold with her sword to his throat.

"Yield," she ordered him.

"No," he said.

The Lady sighed, lowered her sword, and stepped away from him. She turned and raised it again, waiting for her mate to raise his as well.

Rhys would not stand for this.

"Lady Swan," he cried, "have mercy! Can you not see your man is tired?"

The Lady cut her green eyes over to Rhys for only a moment before she returned them to her mate. She did not lower her sword.

Hook, on the other hand, turned to Rhys, his eyes hot and furious.

"You will do me the honor of not giving orders in situations you do not understand, Lord Rhysand," he said. "My Lady and I have been sparring for a hundred years. If she were given her way, the moment I began to flag we would stop, but no strength is built that way. She long since gave me the promise that it was mine to end a session, she would not say different."

He turned away from Rhys so he was facing his wife again.

"Begin," he called.

The Lady moved forward swift and sure and their swords clashed. The Human's anger seemed to fuel him for he moved more fluidly than he had before. She brought her sword down so that it must be caught on his hook. He threw the sword from him and advanced, pushing the Lady back three steps. She feinted to the right, then spun to his left and swept his feet out from under him and when he was on his back placed her bare foot gently on his chest and with her sword at his neck yet again said "yield."

This time he sighed and pushed himself up on his elbows. "You win, Love," he said, shaking his head.

The Lady dropped her sword with a clatter and knelt beside him, checking him over for injury he might have hidden from her.

"Stop it," he complained, sitting up and batting her hands away from him. "You'll unman me before these," he added, gesturing toward the three watching High Fae.

The Lady looked at the other males with clear disdain in her eyes, then returned her attention to her mate quickly.

"You made me push you too hard," she said, anger in her voice. "I do not like it when you force my hand, Hook."

"I cannot grow if you do not push, Love," he said, taking her two hands in his one to stop them checking him yet again for injury. "Hard exercise will not kill me, I have survived worse."

The Lady sighed and reached up to brush his hair from his brow, gentle now, if not quite calm yet.

"If I did not love you so, your many vexations might cause me to hate you," she said.

Hook grinned. "I think most who are long married might say the same. Lucky for me that you  _do_  love me, is it not?"

"For you, yes, perhaps less so for me."

Hook laughed and pushed himself to his feet before offering a hand to his Lady. She took it, but did not follow him as he left the practice ring toward the males waiting there.

He gave a short, sharp bow as he passed them, bent to pick up his shirt, and continued without a word back into the house.

The Lady shook her head and picked up her mate's cutlass, slipping it into the air where it vanished into nothing, presumably back to where she had pulled it from when she and Hook had begun their fight.

She appeared about to do the same with her own longsword when Cassian spoke up.

"Wait," he called.

She turned an expressionless face to him, holding her sword benignly at her side.

"Does my Lord General wish to examine my weapon?" she asked blandly.

"No," he said, crossing to the practice ring and facing her. "I want to fight you."

The Lady stared at him for a long moment. "I suspect you wish to mock me, Lord General, and I have no wish to be mocked. Fight your companions and leave me be."

"You pull your strikes with your husband," Cas said, voice low. "He is human and you could damage him. He is also yours and you have no desire to see him hurt." He grinned then. "I do not damage so easily as a human, and you don't even like me. It is not only your Hook who needs to stretch himself now and again."

The Lady studied him for another moment, then gave a smile which was all sharp teeth and malice.

"As you like, Lord General."

She reached her left hand into the air and withdrew a long dagger which she held back-handed to protect her left arm. Rhys could see Cassian's eyes sparkle- two-handed she would not hold back.

Cas drew his own longsword from the sheath on his back. It was another foot longer than the Lady's and heavy. It required both hands in most cases, where the Lady seemed able to manage hers in a single hand.

Rhys calculated that she would be quicker than Cas, though his reach would greatly exceed hers. She had been fighting for an hour at least already, though she did not appear tired. Cassian was fresh as a daisy. He wouldn't place odds on either one- though he knew Cassian's skill, that look in Lady Swan's eyes was lethal.

"You may change clothes if you like," Cas said with a mocking grin. "Skirts do not serve well for fighting."

"I will not. If I were given to prophecy, I think I would see that this day you will be laid low by a girl in skirts," she said, and grinned again, feral and cruel.

Cassian narrowed his eyes at her, then moved forward for the attack, his sword held in his two hands before him.

The Lady spun away from him. Though he left himself open, she did not even attack.

"If you will give me so little to work with, Lord General, I see why your army must call upon strangers when there is a war to be fought," she said.

Cassian turned toward her, face red with fury. He struck out again, and again she slipped away from him, quick and fluid as water.

"Five gold on Swan to win," Azriel said, leaning toward Rhysand.

"She'll have a harder time once he stops underestimating her," Rhys answered.

The Lady struck on the third volley, quick as a snake and just as deadly. Her sword flashed once at his throat and again at his belly, and he only just caught them to parry them away before his guts spilled on the stones.

"Then again, if he doesn't start paying attention soon, he won't have a chance to give her her due," Rhys said.

Rhys could tell the moment that Cassian began to take seriously the threat of the small girl in the wide skirts. His stance changed, as did his grip on his sword. The Lady could see it as well, and she smiled.

Swords clashed and flashed bright in the early morning sun. Cassian was moving faster now, thinking again. The Lady caught his every strike, but he was beginning to get her measure. She feinted right, but Cas wasn't fooled and caught her moving left. She barely parried his blow with her left-hand blade and spun away from him, laughing all the while.

Hook returned after some time having bathed and changed clothes. He stood beside Rhys and Azriel and watched his Lady apparently attempt to kill a male who had every intention of killing her, fully at his ease.

"Is there money on the outcome?" he asked after a few minutes. "I'd place a bet on her to have him on his back within the quarter-hour."

Rhys snorted. "I should dock his pay if a girl with no military training can best him so quickly."

He did not miss the amused look that Azriel and Hook exchanged, but chose to ignore it.

The Lady was dancing now- she might even be floating. Cassian was fast and strong, but she was faster and tireless. She kept out of his reach, skirts swirling around her, making short jabs at his vitals which he seemed to catch only at the last moment.

Rhysand saw it less than a second after she did. She had spun away from yet another brutal attack by Cassian and had found herself just out of his peripheral vision. He was turned away from her, his legs exposed.

She moved in to sweep his legs from under him and Rhys cursed that he would have to pay the bet, but just as her sword could make contact, she cried out and dropped her weapons, clutching her right wrist in her left hand as though it were injured.

"Swan?" Hook cried, stepping toward the ring.

Cassian turned, sword at the ready, but when he found his opponent unarmed, he dropped his weapon to his side.

Hook ran forward, as did Azriel. Rhys stayed back a pace, but moved toward them to see what was amiss.

Hook grabbed his Lady's hand and pulled it forward to see, displaying a shiny blister across the entire palm as though she had been badly burned.

"What did you do?" Hook asked Cassian, his voice low and dangerous. "She wielded no magic against you. It is poor form to strike out so in the training ring."

"I didn't-" Cassian began.

"It wasn't his fault," the Lady said, pulling her hand back toward herself and closing her fist around the healing burn. "I was a fool."

"What-" Azriel began but the Lady shook her head before he could finish the question.

"I broke bread with them- took food from the hand of the High Lady herself. Now I can harm no one that is hers."

Hook looked shocked. "Swan?" he asked, voice low. "How-"

"You can strike no one in my kingdom?" Rhys asked. "You are completely vulnerable?"

The Lady raised her eyes to his, blazing furiously. She took Hook's arm and moved him behind her so that she stood between him and the Fae males before them.

"If you strike me first, I may retaliate," she said. "This man is my heart, and if you strike him, it is the same as striking me. If you harm him, I shall rain fury upon you which will make you wish for Hybern."

"I thought you did not kill," Rhys said, his face and voice stony.

"For your war, I do not kill. For myself, I do not kill. To protect this man, however, I would blaze a path of destruction that you could only wish to accomplish, High Lord."

"Swan," the human said, his voice soothing.

Cassian broke the stalemate. He took the Lady's shoulder, turned her toward him, and slapped her across the face with all the strength in his right arm.

Rhys was horrified and impressed. Horrified to see Cassian strike a female of any sort. Horrified to see the Lady spit blood onto the stones of the practice ring. Impressed that she stood- she did not so much as step back, only her head rocked back at Cassian's blow.

"Cassian!" Azriel cried.

"Oi!" the pirate shouted.

Both moved as though to step in front of the Changeling and defend her, but she put up a hand which halted them both. Rhys could not help but wonder at Azriel's deference to this stranger.

She turned her head slowly, her green eyes blazing with fury, but Cassian met her stare without flinching.

"When you fight me, Lady Swan, I would not have you do it with one hand tied behind your back," he said. "When you fight me, it will be a fair fight.

The Lady said nothing, only smiled a blood-coated smile.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So since this story takes place before Wings and Ruin entirely, the fact that the Suriel appears in this chapter isn't contradicted by canon.**
> 
> **That said, even if it didn't, the Suriel remains alive in my head because fuck canon. What does canon know about anything anyway?**
> 
> **(Got a job interview today, think good thoughts, but not too good 'cause I really don't know if I want it.)**

Feyre stood uncertain before the door to the room the Lady and the Captain were using. She had seen Hook only minutes before training with Cassian and Azriel. When she'd asked him where Swan was, he'd said she was in their room "having a bath."

Since Feyre had never seen the Lady so much as sweat, she could only assume that bathing was mostly an excuse to be alone.

She knocked anyway. Her need to speak to the Lady was too great to be ignored, and the Lady seemed the sort who would not hesitate to tell her to leave if she wasn't wanted, High Lady or not.

There was no answer from the room.

"Lady Swan?" Feyre called, tapping on the door again. When there was still no answer, she tried the knob and found that it turned. She poked her head into the room and found it empty.

"Lady Swan?" she called again, stepping in to check- not behind the wardrobe or in the ensuite. The Lady was missing.

Feyre searched the house- library, kitchens, and garden- and found nothing. The Lady might be in the city, or back at her mate's ship, or even have transformed herself into a swan again and flown south for the winter. Feyre knew she wouldn't find the Lady before she wanted to be found, so she slumped into a chair in Rhysand's study and brooded.

She'd wanted to offer the Lady her help. She had heard in the unspoken words the previous night (and Hook's quick exit after the Lady had flown away) that they suspected that the price for saving Prythian would be her mate's life.

Feyre wondered if she could sacrifice Rhys to save the world. It seemed unthinkable when they'd only just found one-another, but after 100 years? Would her affection for Rhys have tempered enough that she would consider the entire world worth him?

And what if the world weren't her own, but strangers? And strangers who had given her no reason to love them?

Feyre wanted to see if she could help come up with any other price- a price she could try to share with the Lady, even, if possible- that would save Hook and save her world.

She also wanted, in a secret, almost-shameful part of herself, to know more about the Lady. She had had everything as a human, and then had everything ripped away when she learned she was Fae. It was the opposite of Feyre's own story, but the fact that the Lady had clawed back her everything…

Feyre sighed. She wasn't helping anyone right now, and was feeling rather useless. If only someone could answer the question that was foremost in her mind: how could the Lady destroy the Cauldron without sacrificing her mate?

Suddenly it struck her. How could she have been so stupid? The Suriel!

She glanced around herself and frowned… how to find him?

Two hours later, Feyre had gathered her supplies- twine for a snare, some chicken, a robe, and her hunting knife, and winnowed out of Velaris to a quiet, obscure stream that would appeal to the Suriel. She had every intention of laying her trap, but when she landed, she heard a voice she recognized.

"Hello Uncle, you've kept me waiting."

It was Lady Swan's voice.

"You should have long since learned patience, Niece."

Feyre started. That voice which sounded like dry branches and creaking bones was also familiar to her. It was the voice she had come to find- the Suriel.

She considered making herself known, but also felt awkward at the thought. Amren had told her that Swan and the Suriel were related, but she'd not thought- she didn't care to interrupt this family reunion.

"It's been a time, are you well?" Lady Swan asked.

The Suriel snorted. "As well as any creature as old as I am can possibly be, but you didn't call on me to ask after my health, Child. What was it you wanted?"

"You've no sense of diplomacy, Uncle. You never have. You'd think an immortal would learn the art of small talk."

"You've spent too much time with those humans you're so fond of."

"I've little enough choice in the matter, even if I wanted it."

"You needn't spend  _all_  your time with your mate, Child. Often and often there's those that don't. You're lucky you've a mate you're fond of as well."

"I'm hardly the only one to have had such luck. Do you know the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court?"

"Come we now closer to the point? I know the lady. She has sought my counsel before- once when she was a human, and once since her… rebirth."

"She caught you as a human?" the Lady asked, sounding surprised and impressed. "I thought she was brave, but that veers rather close to foolhardy."

"She is both. Tell it straight out, Niece. What is it you wish to know of the newest Lady of Night?"

"It is not she who vexes me, Uncle. Nor even her husband… though he is rather irritating. I suppose you know of their coming war?"

"I have an ear in every spring and clearing in Prythian, my dear. I knew of Hybern's plans before even they were set."

"Of course you did. Does omniscience not grow wearisome after so long?"

"Hardly. Why concern yourself with the war among the High Fae? Your lands are in no danger. This fight is none of yours."

"So I keep telling myself. And yet, here I stand."

"Say it clear, Niece, you riddle worse than I."

"I could only aspire to your obfuscations, Uncle. But here it is plain: Lord and Lady Night think I can unmake the Cauldron and stop the war before it begins."

The Suriel was silent for so long that Feyre wondered if he had suddenly gone. She wanted to peek, but was sure that if she moved even a muscle, both creatures would know she was there, listening, in an instant.

Finally, the Suriel broke the silence.

"How ... interesting. I had not considered… but the prophecy which guides your life-"

"Damn that bloody prophecy to all seven hells!" the Lady cried.

There was a sound that was like the turning of grave dirt. It took Feyre several seconds to realize that it was the Suriel's laugh.

"You sound more like those pirates you keep company with each time I see you, my dear."

"Pirates are better company than High Lords and Ladies," Swan muttered petulantly.

"In most cases, I would tell you that you are correct, Sweet. But not in the case of Feyre."

"She gave you her name?"

"She did not give it to you?"

"She did," the Lady said. "She's a trusting thing."

"She would claim that she is not. That she trusts no one. She would be wrong. She is an idealist, your High Lady."

"She is  _not_ my High Lady."

"And yet you come from her home, asking me about her."

"I am not asking about her! I am asking about the Cauldron!"

"Ah yes, the Cauldron. The beginning of all things which, if unmade, will unmake all else. And you're tasked with the destruction of the world, as prophesied. No, of course, you do not want to think how Rumplestiltskin has told your life story already, my mistake."

"I do not intend to destroy the world. That's my problem, really."

"You weary me, Child. Tell it all plain or leave me in peace!"

"I spoke to the Dark One last night. I asked him whether there was any way to destroy the Cauldron without sacrificing my mate to it. I will not give him as coin for this world."

"No," the Suriel said, and it was not a question. "He is more to you than all else. He has been kinder to you than the High Fae even know how to be."

"As you say. The Dark One says that the unmaking of the Cauldron is not the trouble- the price will not be high. It is halting the unmaking of the world which will beg the price. He could not be sure, but his understanding of the prophecy made him think that, if not my mate, the price might be the Underground."

"Your home."

"If it were simply a matter of abdicating my crown and abandoning the palace, I would do so in a trice. I am not without sympathy for Prythian, Uncle. I have no love of war and death."

"I know it of you, Niece. You need not defend yourself to me."

"But the Underground is more than my pride. It is a refuge for the homeless and unwanted. All humans and the Low Fae of Prythian are welcome there and may live without molestation. For me alone, it is nothing, but for them… oh Uncle! I would sooner give them up than my husband, but I would not soon do either."

"It would seem, my dear, that you have your answers already. Why ask for my wisdom if you have spoken with the Dark One already?"

"Because the Dark One is even more bitter than I, Uncle. But you… you have lived above for so long. I think you are the only one who can answer my question."

"Which is?"

"Is this world worth saving?"

Once again the Suriel was silent for a very long time. Feyre held her breath as she awaited, as Swan did, his verdict.

"No," he said, finally.

Feyre's blood went cold.

"Then my choice is clear," the Lady said, her voice cool and deadly.

"It isn't, in fact," the Suriel said. "This world is not worth the saving now, but that does not mean it could not be."

"My task is in the present, or relatively so, not the future."

"But it is the future you save. Unruffle your feathers and let me tell you of the High Lady."

"I did not call you to ask after-"

"Of course you did." The Suriel sounded amused as his Niece sounded frustrated and exhausted. "Why else would I have agreed to meet with you? Feyre is a subject which I find quite interesting, which is more than can be said for wars and cauldrons."

"You begin to vex me, Uncle."

"Just wait until I tell you what my wisdom costs."

"I have for you the silver light of the pole star from a land without magic."

"I will have nothing so benign. I want a peach grown in the blighted orchards of the Underground."

"Uncle-"

"Was it not you who called for me?"

"You have given me the answer I seek. What keeps me from turning around now and marching back to the High Lord's seat and disappointing them all?"

"You are human enough to have their curious curse, and Fae enough to play by the rules."

"You are a wicked creature," the Lady said. "There, take it, and may you choke on it."

"I wouldn't dare be so careless. Now, the Lady Feyre."

"I did not come to hear about her."

"Would you leave without all the knowledge you've paid so dearly for? And here I'd thought you thrifty."

The Lady sighed. "Fine, go on then."

"I have said that the Lady Feyre is an idealist, and her mate is a dreamer. Perhaps you dislike him so because he is so like you. Their city, Velaris, is the result of his dream: a refuge, like your Underground."

"A refuge for the High Fae."

"True enough, but for humans too. Lord Night had sympathy for the humans in the old war, and Velaris has never mistreated them. But he met Feyre… and you know what love can do."

"He fell in love with a human and now he is able to love humanity, which is a fine trait, but he shall not next fall in love with a piskie or goblin or, stars above, a changeling."

"Not him, perhaps, but one of his court?"

"Do not try me, Uncle. The Shadowsinger is-"

"-Not the issue that you brought before me today, Child. I'll say no more about it. I've more to say of dreamers, however."

"Say on then."

"The High Lord is not kind, but is capable of choosing sympathy. The High Lady is kind, and has a great deal of pull over him. You are their savior, my dear."

"Speak plainly, Uncle, lest I call you a hypocrite."

"I cannot say it plainer than this: this war might be won without your help by the High Lord and his armies. If so, he will sit at the top of a new world order and will make it in the image of his dreams. If he wins without your help, he will make this world better: it will be kinder to the Fae and his Lady will ensure it is kinder to the humans, but they are blind as any creature. They will not remember the Low Fae. If you save them though, you will have a place in building the new world, and you may make a place for your people as high as human and High Fae alike.

"What I say is this, Lady: you may be forced to destroy one refuge, but in so doing, you could eliminate the need for one."

The Lady said nothing, and there was silence in the clearing for a very long time. So long, in fact, that Feyre wondered if they had gone and had almost worked up her courage to look.

But then the Suriel spoke again.

"You will do as you must, Sweet Niece, as will I. And what I must is away."

"Uncle!" the Lady called, as though he had already begun to leave and she wanted to stop him. "If war comes to Prythian, come to the Underground, won't you? I think this world would be a poorer place without you in it, and though you are wily and strong, still you are not deathless."

"And if I take your offer, will I be given refuge in your blighted orchard?"

"You know the way to my Kingdom, and you are far too quick for me to catch. Why do you not take my peaches for yourself?"

"You know better than that, Child. I do not steal. I take only what is given me. I may come to you if the world turns upside-down, but I think it may not come to that. Keep well, Niece."

"And you, Uncle."

Feyre hadn't time to move, even if she had realized what was coming. The Suriel burst into the clearing where she stood and grinned his wicked, cruel grin at her.

"High Lady," he said, his terrible voice perfectly loud enough for Lady Swan to hear still, "I see you have brought me a robe and some food. How very kind."

He gathered the items Feyre still held in her arms and vanished into the woods leaving Feyre standing empty-handed before the Lady of the Underground who had followed her uncle's voice to stand in judgement of the Lady of Night.

"Persephone," she said. For the first time since she'd begun calling Feyre by that name, there was no affection or amusement behind it. Instead, Feyre was reminded of what the Lady had said of the name when she had told the story: the Destroyer of Light. The Queen of Chaos.

Feyre said nothing and the two females stood in silence for a long moment.

"What is it brings you so far from your castle seat, High Lady?" Swan asked, finally.

"I-" Feyre began, stumbling. "I came to find the Suriel."

"And find him you did, it would seem. Yet, rather than speaking up and asking the question for which you came so far, instead you stood in the shadows and listened. Your Shadowsinger could not answer this question for you, so you took his place?"

"No, I-"

"The fact that my Uncle could take your gifts means that whatever question you came to ask was answered. So what was it, Lady Night? Which of my weaknesses did you come to learn to exploit?"

"It's nothing like that! I just wanted to know if there was any way that you could help us without sacrificing Hook! But you'd already found the answer! You can do it, and we can all-"

"You think I will crush my kingdom in my fist like a stone for you?"

Feyre fumbled. "B-but you said you would."

"I said I  _might_ , if your world was worth it."

"Your uncle said-"

"My uncle said you might be  _made_  worthy. I should destroy a known refuge for a potential one? My people deserve better than the scorn and disrespect that I have been privy to in your kingdom. They haven't my power, nor my pride. I will not allow your people to crush them."

"We wouldn't, Lady! I would never allow-"

"They are  _mine_ , Child.  _I_  will not allow, for it is mine to decide."

"Please! You must help us Em-"

Feyre froze as she realized her mistake. The Lady's face went still and blank as a snake's.

"Lady Swan!" Feyre cried, as though this might recover her. "Lady Swan, please!"

"How. Do. You. Know. My. Name?" the Lady asked, her voice slow and measured and cold.

"I heard Hook call you it. The first day you arrived. On the ship. Lady, I swear-"

"And I suppose every member of your Court of Dreams knows it now, Girl. You've given them the power which you claimed unlawfully."

"No! I haven't told anyone, not even Rhysand!"

The Lady shook her head. "I should kill you for what you've done," she said, and in her hand suddenly flashed a crooked iron blade, the heart of which was ashwood.

Feyre's fear burst the dam she had erected and flooded down the line to Rhysand, and she felt him respond.

"You don't kill," she whispered. "You said."

"Ask your Lord General what a changeling's word is worth. Your only salvation is the Old Magic of broken bread, and I curse you for it."

With a pop, Rhysand appeared, holding Killian in a prisoner's grip. Behind him an instant later appeared Azriel and Cassian, swords at the ready.

The Lady turned a sneer on the High Lord of the Night Court.

"Have I not told you that you are in no physical danger from me? Neither you nor your wife, but you will find that changes if you harm that man."

Rhysand released Hook's arms, but kept a hard hand on his shoulder to keep him from leaving.

"What have you done?" he asked, his voice soft and low as a panther's growl.

"I?" the Lady asked, imperious. "I have done nothing but attempt to save your world. It is your wife who has proven duplicitous and venal. Ask her now why your world may hang so far as I am concerned. And if the armies of your enemies march upon your kingdom, know that the blood of your soldiers would be on your queen's hands."

The Lady turned on the spot and vanished in a puff of smoke the color of moonlight.

"A faithless woman," Rhysand said, giving Hook a vicious grin. "She has left you defenseless among us."

"You think so?" Hook asked, apparently unafraid. "You think I, Lord of the Underground, cannot take a step and find myself in my kingdom with only a wish? She's right, you are a proud fool. And if you think you could lay even a single hand upon me and not have her back here with an ashwood scythe to cut you all down like wheat, you are more than a fool, and you deserve your fate."

He turned away from Rhysand disdainfully and glared at Feyre.

"What did you do to my Lady?"

"She?" Rhys cried. "Feyre could not-"

"Swan cannot lie," Hook said, emphasizing each word clearly. "If she says your wife is duplicitous, then it is true."

"I know her name," Feyre said, her voice low and ashamed. "I almost called her by it and-"

"You deceitful bitch," Hook said, his voice disgusted. "She should have torn out your tongue for that. Perhaps I will do her the service."

"You will not threaten my wife," Rhys said. He was between Hook and Feyre in an instant, his wings out, his hands slowly elongating into great, vicious claws.

"Your wife threatened mine," Hook said. He was not as tall as Rhys, nor as powerful, but he was furious and proud and for an instant, Feyre wondered if he could defeat her mate somehow.

"I didn't!" she cried, hoping to diffuse the situation. "I would never-"

"Do you know what the name of an Old One is, Girl?" Hook spat, looking past Rhysand as though he were nothing and finding her eyes over his shoulder. "It is power. Were you a creature like Swan, I could say to you, 'Feyre, jump off the cliff,' and you would do so. I could say 'Feyre, cut off your own head,' and you would. You think I would allow that power to remain on your liar's tongue?"

Rhysand surged forward and had his claws around Hook's throat in an instant, roaring incoherently.

Hook's back crashed into a tree trunk, but he grinned into Rhys' furious face.

"I hope your world falls," he said through his teeth. "I hope your armies crumble beneath the boot of Hybern. We shall listen from the Underground and laugh. But never fear, Lord Night, we are not without mercy. We will take your refugees, as we have taken them from your cruelty for a century already. The Low Fae who might be slaughtered, they need only wish themselves safe, and so they will be. But the High Fae, who think themselves so powerful? Our gates will be closed to them, as your gates have been closed to my Lady for so long."

Then he closed his eyes and vanished from Rhys' grip.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Happy Friday the 13th, everybody.  Things are about to get spooooky!**
> 
> **Okay, not really, just dramatic.  Next week is when things get very serious, and if anyone is going to die (not that I'm saying anyone is going to die, but I'm not NOT saying it either) it's going to happen next week.**
> 
> **Consider that your warning.**
> 
> **And consider this your consolation: in both of the source materials for this story, people who die have a weird habit of not staying dead, especially when they're dark, handsome, semi-immortal, and have a history of being a villain.**
> 
> **Just a thought to carry with you going forward.**

Amren looked up from her reading a moment before Rhysand burst into her apartments followed closely by Feyre, Azriel, and Cassian.

Rhysand looked as though he might explode, Feyre as though she might cry, and both Cassian and Azriel looked stone-faced and angry. Still Amren made a point of looking about herself for a bookmark, placing it carefully on her page, closing the book over it, and placing it neatly on the stack on her table before meeting her High Lord's flaming violet eyes.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" she asked, blandly.

"Our hopes of avoiding war with Hybern are over," Rhys said, biting off each word as though it had insulted him personally. "We need to convene a council of war."

"In my living room?" Amren asked. "And what about your pet weapon?"

"Swan and Hook are gone," Azriel said. He and Cassian exchanged an unreadable look.

"Oh? Why?"

"What does it matter, why?" Rhys asked. "She has abandoned us and returned to her own country without aiding our fight."

"She's gone back to the Underground," Amren said, "without her ship or her men?"

Rhys opened his mouth, glanced around at his wife and his men, then closed it again.

"I ask again,  _why_  has she left, and I'd appreciate an honest answer," Amren said, finally allowing a sliver of her temper to show through.

"I nearly called her by her name," Feyre said, her voice shaking.

Amren blinked. She had not expected this. "You know her name?"

"I… I heard Hook call her E-"

"Don't say it! Haven't you learned anything, Fool? Stars and stones, I thought humans remembered the Old Ways better than that!"

"Th-the Old Ways?"

Amren shook her head. "Do not eat, drink, or sleep in Faerie lands. Do not make bargains. Guard your heart and even more than that, guard your name. You knew the rules once, Feyre. You wouldn't give Tamlin or Rhysand your name at first. Has power made you forget so quickly? She knew your names but never used them as a courtesy. You tried to use hers, and not only was it a threat to her, it was just plain rude." Amren shook her head. "You will have to apologize to her."

"Apologize?" Rhys roared.

Amren turned and gave him a narrow-eyed stare. "Let me guess. When Lady Swan became angry you rushed to your lady's side like an avenging knight, regardless of the fact she'd made her own mess. You growled and showed your teeth and made threats, which only made everything worse."

"I-"

" _Apologize_ , High Lord. On your knees if you have to. You don't want to fight this war. It will not end well for your world."

"She said she wouldn't help us!" Feyre cried. "She said- and she can't tell an untruth! She can't do it now!"

"Did she?" Amren asked. "Perhaps it's past time you tell me what happened, as accurately as you can. I want each of Swan's words exactly as she said them."

It took several minutes, and some confusion among them all about the precise words the Lady had spoken when they had all heard, but eventually the tale was told.

"It sounds to me like the only certain statements were made by the Captain, and he, being human, may lie as any human might," Amren said finally. "We are not without hope yet."

"She said the world may hang," Azriel said.

"And it may, with or without her help," Amren said.

"She said when the armies of the enemy come-" Feyre said, her voice weepy again.

"You didn't all agree on that, but Azriel holds that she said ' _if_  the armies come' not ' _when'_  and I am inclined to believe him. He's a good listener, our Az."

"So what are you saying?" Rhys asked irritably. "We can now go to the Underground and beg the Lady on our knees to save us after all she's done?"

"What is it you think she's done, Rhys?" Amren asked. "She has questioned those of her kind with wisdom and prophecy to find a way to serve you without giving up the most important thing in her life. She was trying to find a way to save your world, and your mate went and mucked it up for her! For that matter, if you hadn't come to stand between Feyre and the apology she might have made-"

"That creature threatened her with a knife!"

"Feyre threatened her with worse than that! Besides, they shared that cookie in the bakery yesterday. Swan couldn't have hurt her if she'd wanted to!"

Azriel and Cassian exchanged a look and Rhysand's eyes bounced away from her suddenly. Amren narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

"You  _knew_  she couldn't harm Feyre, and still you roared in like a hurricane to protect what needed no protection? Tell me, Rhysand: if you knew your power were drained, but still you were posturing before an enemy, and another enemy that you knew could destroy you flew in and began threatening you, what would you do? Beat a hasty retreat, I think, would you not?"

Rhysand said nothing, but he would not meet her eyes.

"Perhaps I'm wrong about you, Rhys. Perhaps you  _want_  this war."

That made him look up, offense and fury bright in his handsome face.

"Of course I don't want war! I would do anything to-" He stopped, realizing what he had said.

"Anything, Rhys? Does that include going to the Underground and groveling?"

"Yes," Feyre said, her voice finally strong again. "But it's not Rhys who needs to make the apology, it's me."

"It's both of you, in fact," Amren said. "That said, I do not think you'll be able to go, Feyre dear."

"Not able- Why?"

Amren raised one dark, arched brow. "Did you not listen to Hook there at the last? They will be barring the Underground from the High Fae." Amren gestured between herself and the High Lady. "In this room, that means you and me. If the Lady is unaware of Rhys'...  _unique_  parentage, perhaps he might slip past her defenses."

"Fine!" Rhys barked. "Where is the Underground then? How do I get there?"

Amren shook her head in disbelief. "You didn't read the book?"

"Book?"

"The  _book_  you fool! The one Lady Swan gave you yesterday by the Williams girl!"

Rhysand frowned for a moment, then his face cleared, seeming to remember.

"I recall the book, but no, I haven't read it."

Amren sighed. "She told you it was for your studies. The answer is there, but even if you haven't read it, she told you herself. And her mate."

"I'm sure I'd have remembered if she'd mentioned where the entrance to her lands are. Azriel, how did your shadows get in?"

Az looked uncomfortable, but answered. "They were searching the mountains near the Middle, Rhys. They'd been looking for days, then one day they came across a cave they'd never seen before and looked in. It was the entrance to her kingdom."

"So I'll go there!"

Azriel shook his head. "No, Rhys. When I went, it wasn't there. I returned to Velaris to consider what that meant. The next day I went out to search again and while I was flying through the mountains I saw a river where there had never been a river before. I went down to examine it, and followed it less than a mile to the Underground. The entrance is nowhere, Rhys."

"It's everywhere," Amren corrected. "One must  _wish_  their way into the Underground."

"Fine! I wish to be in the Underground," Rhys said. When nothing happened, he turned on Amren with a look of annoyance.

"First of all, Lad, you have to mean it. Second of all, you can't wish ill or harm on anyone or anything there. It's magic, and it has rules."

Rhysand only continued to glare and Amren sighed.

"Azriel could do it. He is no High Fae, and he wishes no ill on Lady Swan."

All eyes in the room turned suddenly to Azriel who looked shocked and had begun to shake his head before Amren had even finished her statement. Cassian and Rhys both looked a little surprised. Feyre only looked speculative, and Amren wondered what she had learned, listening to the Suriel and the Lady speak.

"I don't think-" Azriel began.

"Try," Rhys said, his voice low and mildly threatening.

"Rhys, I-"

"That is an order, Azriel. Try to wish you and me into the Underground."

Az swallowed hard, glanced around the room once, then reached for Rhys' arm before he closed his eyes tight, frowned in thought and then-

They were gone.

~?~?~?~?~

"I can't do it from the Underground. I'd have to go into the overworld, and if I fail that won't be a safe place either. Perhaps I could do it from another world?"

"Would your power stretch so far?"

"Probably not."

"You cross worlds so easily. If you realize it's failed you could just… step away, couldn't you?"

"Maybe, but then I'd have doomed them all."

"Better them than you."

"Holding a grudge is not worth our time. What's done is done."

"Where will our people all go?"

"They might go to the Night Kingdom, those that wish to go. All except the Changelings, I think. They probably would not be welcome after all of that, but the others… the High Lady would see they're not mistreated. The Changelings may have to go to the Middle. My uncle could keep an eye on them."

"The same High Lady who-"

"The very same. I suspect she's learned her lesson now. As for you three-"

"Now wait a second-"

" _As for you three_ , I will take you to the Jolly. You two will have to scour the city for the men, since you're unknown there, then I'll send you to the Land Without Magic to be with your daughter."

"Mom!"

"No!"

"If you think you can shunt me off like-"

There was a crash as though someone had just brought down both hands onto a table in frustration. "I will not have you three anywhere near me while I do it! If the spell fails, I may find myself compelled to seek another price. If you were near enough to me, I might…"

"I told you, Swan, I'd be with you every step of the way. If this fails and you can't get away, you'll die in the overworld like the rest of them, and I'll die only minutes after. I'd sooner die at your side than a world away. Send the children off if you must, I don't object, but I'm going nowhere."

"You know he's right, Mom. Better to have him at your side."

"You'd think after being married a hundred years, you'd know better than to try to get rid of him."

"When you've been married as long, we shall see if you are as wise as you think I should be."

"We won't make a hundred years… not once we leave the Underground."

"Oh my darlings, I hadn't thought. How can I-"

"Oh do hush. You have to do this. We're human, we were never meant to have a hundred years anyway. We'll have more than our fair share regardless."

"Don't look like that, Mom. It'll be a ways off yet."

Rhysand and Azriel stood in the shadows of a high-ceilinged stone gallery which echoed with voices. Given a few moments to listen, Rhysand was able to determine that there were only four. Two he knew: Lady Swan and Captain Hook. The other two he did not know, but they called the Lady "mom" and that was very interesting.

The table at which they sat was at the far end of the room, and they did not know that Rhys and Azriel stood watch over them. He knew, however, that if he were to rectify Feyre's mistake, he must make himself known.

He stepped out of the shadows and made his way up the gallery with a firm tread, Azriel at his heel. The conversation was too involved to notice, however, which meant he was forced to clear his throat dramatically.

All four at the table stood and turned as though synchronized. Naturally, the Lady had been at the head and was closest to Rhys when she stood. She wore pure swan white, a simple, sleeveless gown which gave her arms their greatest range of motion as she pulled two ashwood daggers out of the air at the sight of him.

Hook was on her right hand and drew his sword. At her left were two strangers, one a young man with brown hair and eyes who drew a shortsword, the other a woman of the same age, with black hair and a kind face that could settle into a hard coldness worthy of any fae- he recognized her from Azriel's description of the Lady of the Underground from before they had met her.

"Who-" the young man began, but he was cut off by Hook.

"Children, may I introduce High Lord Rhysand of the Night Court, and Lord Spymaster Azriel. Don't get friendly, I suspect your mother might kill them."

"You can't harm me," Rhys said, his voice sure even as he kept walking toward them. "You can harm nothing that is Feyre's, and if I am nothing else in this world, I am hers."

The two young humans looked at the Lady for guidance, and the Lady herself narrowed her eyes, then sheathed the daggers back into the air and held her hands up flat before her.

Rhysand took another step and felt as though he had walked into a huge pane of thick glass.

"You'll come no closer to me and mine," she said. "Clearly my barriers need shoring up again. I had thought to keep your kind away."

Rhysand gave her a toothy grin. "Did you not know, Lady, that my blood is half Illyrian? I am lesser faerie as well."

The Lady drew her eyes over him in a bored way. "You should be so lucky." When he went to speak again she closed one fist, and Rhys felt as though air wrapped itself around his head to close his jaw tight. "Your voice grates on my ears, Lord Night. You, Shadowsinger, tell me what it is brings you to my home? Have you not done enough damage?"

"We came to apologize," Azriel said.

"And a fine job you've made of it too," Hook said, bitingly sarcastic.

Azriel dropped to one knee, crossed his right fist over his chest, and bowed his head. Rhysand watched in shock, unable to say anything. He had not seen Azriel do anything of the sort in so many years… it was the position one took to pledge fealty to a High Lord.

"My Lady," Az said, his eyes on the floor at the Lady's feet. "I apologize wholeheartedly for my part in your mistreatment at the Court of Night. We gave you no chance to find your own way, your own price. We treated those you love as less important than our citizens, and your citizens as nothing, as we have treated the Low Fae for centuries. For all of that, I am sorry. Even after all of that, we come to find you planning to save us in spite of ourselves. We do not deserve your mercy, Lady, but I thank you for it."

"You don't deserve it," the Lady said, softly, "but my uncle thinks you might someday, and it seems too heartless, even for me, to deny you the chance. Stand, Lord Shadowsinger, no one need kneel in my kingdom. You were kind to me. Respectful. You have little enough to apologize for, but you've done it prettily. Stand and be welcome in the Underground."

Azriel raised his head, but did not stand.

"Lady Swan, I would ask that you accept my name as a gift. I would that you would call me Azriel. Or Az. All my friends do."

The Lady glanced at her husband, who smiled, then turned to Azriel and nodded.

"Stand then, Az. Come meet the children."

Azriel smiled and rose, stepping forward without hesitation through the curtain of air which had stopped Rhysand. Rhys was so shocked that he failed for several long minutes to notice that the Lady's hand had dropped and his prison of air was gone.

"This is my ward," the Lady said, gesturing to the brown-haired young man. "And my…" she hesitated as she pointed out the woman.

"I'm her daughter-in-law," the girl said with a grin, "but she can't say it because it isn't technically true."

"Henry," the boy said, offering a hand to Azriel to shake.

"Jacinda," said the girl.

They both noted the Lady's silent objection to their names and laughed.

"We're leaving Faerie, Mom," Henry said. "No need to be so guarded with our names."

"Even in your new land, it's best not to be foolish with them," the Lady said, but she smiled back at the pair of them.

Hook stepped forward and put a hand on Azriel's shoulder and leaned in to speak quietly in his ear. Rhys could not hear, but he saw Az look at first uncomfortable, then afraid, and then, shockingly, pleased. He turned to Hook and smiled, and the two males embraced briefly.

Rhysand watched all of this as he stood before the Court of the Underground and was completely ignored.

Finally he managed to pull himself together sufficiently to speak.

"You- you are going to unmake the Cauldron? After all that?"

It was hardly the wittiest or most sensible statement he had ever made, and the Lady's expression when she turned to face him said clear that she thought the same.

"Did I not say so? One might think that you would have learned by now that my word is good."

"Until you begin to twist your words. Amren said I had to come apologize. That I should grovel."

The Lady gave a cold smile. "I suspect that Amren is right more often than she is wrong. I said that no one kneels in my kingdom, but I am the queen here and would make the exception for you."

"I go to my knees before no one but the High Lady of the Night Court," Rhys said, back straight and proud.

The Lady shared a glance full of knowing amusement with her mate.

"I sympathize, High Lord, truly I do. Yet still, you come to my kingdom and seek an audience with me straight-backed as though it is I who should do obeisance to you. Do you forget who is queen here?"

"It would seem my obeisance was never necessary."

"By the Cauldron, Rhys!" Azriel cried. "You are the most stubborn male I think I've ever known. The Lady is doing our world a great service after she's been treated so poorly by us, and asking nothing of us-"

"I didn't say that," the Lady interrupted.

The attention of both members of the Night Court sharpened perceptibly.

"You've come to a land of Old Magic, where nothing is given without a price. You may bend your knee to me, or else you might make me an oath."

"What oath?" Rhysand asked quickly.

The Lady laughed, but it was a cheerful, joyous sound- not at all like the sharp, angry barks of laughter that he had mostly heard while she had been in his kingdom. Like the young, sweet lass she had been on her mate's ship, she was a different sort of woman in her own kingdom. She fairly glowed with power here, and either in spite of or because of this, she moved more freely, smiled more easily, and spoke more openly.

"Is the thought of kneeling before me so horrendous as all that?" the Lady mused. "Never mind, I'd have the oath from you anyway."

"Will you have me swear on the altar to your gods?" Rhys asked, his voice bitter.

"We have no gods in the Underground," the Lady said. "Only ourselves and the Old Magic. I'll ask that you swear in blood and before my people at the Heart that you will offer them refuge in return for your salvation."

"And if I refuse?"

Azriel and Hook both made furious noises, but the Lady only smiled and shrugged.

"Then you will have no salvation."

Rhysand's mouth fell open in shock.

"You were planning-" he began.

"I was planning to save you, but for my sake, not for yours. Then you took it upon yourself to stroll into my kingdom, cocksure and assuming you could manipulate me. Since you will neither bend a knee nor apologize, you must have thought you could buy my compliance with pretty words or some gift. What was it you thought to offer me, High Lord? Gold? A place on your court? Did you bring your brother here thinking to tempt me with his pretty face? I've gold and I want it, a court of my own, and pretty boys for my bed if I were somehow to find it cold."

"Mother!" the young man said, blushing.

"Honestly, Swan," Hook said, clearly holding back a laugh.

Azriel only seemed to be choking on his tongue.

The Lady ignored all of this, never taking her eyes from Rhysand's.

"I'll have the oath from you, or you shall have war."

The Lady and Rhysand stood, eyes locked, for several long minutes. The Lady's small, ironic smile never altered, and it was Rhysand who was forced to look away first.

"Fine," he said through his teeth. "I swear it."

The Lady laughed again. "You'll swear in blood, High Lord, but not here. Here's no place for making grand pronouncements. Come."

The Lady started off down the gallery up which Rhysand and Azriel had come. Her court and Azriel followed after her quickly, leaving Rhysand jogging behind them when he had finally collected himself.

"No place for pronouncements?" he asked when he had joined the procession. "It's your palace."

"It's positively dreary," the Lady said, shaking her head. "Curse Jareth and his dramatic sensibilities."

"You might have a second home," Rhys said with a small bite of sarcasm. "It is not without precedent."

"I do," the Lady said, catching the eye of her mate and smiling.

They walked without further conversation through the palace, down the steps, and through the ruins of an empty city. For all its dereliction, however, there were beginning to show signs of life: gardens re-turned, streets swept, windows repaired.

Out the gates of the city the Lady stopped. "Welcome to the Labyrinth," she said, her voice full of pride.

Rhysand looked around. It was a village street, so far as he could see. A small, agrarian sort of a village with neat cottages and small shops. Nothing out of the ordinary, and no labyrinth that he had ever seen.

As he followed after the Lady, however, he began to see that the streets were patterned in a great circle leading to a central point and, like a labyrinth of old, as one came to the point, one trod each and every path.

The Labyrinth had become a home.

As they went they saw the citizens of the Underground- the grotesque, the venal, the low, and the monstrous. In among them were the fair and the ordinary- humans and nymphs, changelings, and even, to Rhysand's surprise, Illyrian.

He'd never known Illyrian outside of his father's army. He hadn't known that there was another choice for them, but there was a male dressed in a painter's smock which had been cut away from his great black wings. When he saw the Lady, he grinned and crossed his yard to greet her.

"Lady! I see you have brought new brothers for me, how fine! Come inside for tea and to see my new painting, you will love it!"

"Not today, I've an announcement to make."

The Illyrian was now close enough to see the Lady's face and stopped, his friendly smile changing to a look of wary readiness.

"You are sad, my Lady. What's amiss?"

"Come, dear Lysander. There's much to be said, but not here. We're going to the Heart."

The Illyrian, Lysander, nodded and untied his smock to join them. The piskies and goblins were curious by nature and followed without invitation. The humans and changelings came at the Lady's request without objection. By the time they had reached the center, they had passed every house and shop and every citizen of the Underground- some thousand souls- had joined them.

The center of the maze was, to Rhys' slight surprise, a small oasis. There was a clear, calm pond upon which two swans swam in lazy indifference to the number of people who were crowding their space. At one side of the pond stood a tall apple tree in full fruit, though it was early spring in Rhys' own lands, and he would have said it was the same in the Underground.

Though he had thought the center small when they had arrived, it seemed to grow to accommodate those who came to it, and all the citizens of the Underground were able to stand around the pond by the time they had stopped milling about.

The Lady led her party to the apple tree, and they ranged out from her to stand visible. Rhysand remained beside Swan, and Hook stood on his other side. The children and Azriel stood at the other side of the tree together.

The Lady stood straight and looked out over her people, her eyes gentle and a little sad, and began to speak.

"When I came here to the Underground all those years ago, I was alone. An orphan like so many of you. I did not remain here alone for long-" she looked over at the human man who called himself her son, "-but still I was an orphan. But then you began to come to me- one and two at a time. You had wished yourselves somewhere safe. Somewhere far from your oppressors. Somewhere you could live free. You found yourselves here, and though I had no idea at the time what to do with you, or how to be your Lady, still I could not send you away when you were as alone as I, so here you stayed.

"Some of you will remember those dark days when we all tried to live in the palace and the old city together-" a breath of laughter moved through the crowds, and the Lady smiled. "When the Labyrinth began to sprout houses, we all thought our salvation had come. The Labyrinth became our home, and so it has been for a hundred years since.

"I was an orphan when I came here, but you- each and every one of you- became my family, my people. For that, I will love you all until the end of the world.

"The time has come, my dear ones, that the Labyrinth can no longer shelter us. We have lived apart from the world for so long now- but they are in need, and it will take all the power of the Labyrinth to save them. We could sit idle here in our relative safety, but that would be wicked and cruel and base- all the things that they claim we are, but that we have proven the lie of here in our world together.

"Know this, though: I gave you refuge here, free from cruel mistreatment. I do not intend to send you back to it. I have found a new refuge for you and all of you. You will go to the Night Kingdom and the city of Velaris. There you will be welcomed and treated kindly, given rest, and given a life.

"You know my words are truth, but I would that you had more than truth. This male here is the High Lord Rhysand of the Court of Night-" this announcement sent a shiver through the listening crowd, and her tongue on his name that first time gave Rhys a powerful sense of magic and fear, "-and we will have his oath that what I say is true. We will have it in blood, by Old Magic and New."

The Lady turned to him and reached her left hand for his right, turning it so the palm was up. With her right hand, she drew an ashwood blade from the air.

"High Lord Rhysand," she said, and her odd accent caressed the syllables in a different way than he'd ever heard, which he told himself was why his name sounded so sinister in her mouth, "do you swear that my people may seek refuge in the seat of your kingdom, Velaris?"

"I so swear," he said, and the Lady drew the blade across the palm of his hand. It was sharp and Rhysand scarcely felt it, but the blood welled up, red and full of magic.

"Do you swear that my people will be welcomed in Velaris?" the Lady asked.

"I so swear," he said, and she drew the blade across the palm again, creating a great X across it.

"Do you swear that they will be treated kindly by your people?"

"I so swear."

"And do you swear that they will be given rest and purpose?"

"I so swear."

When she was done there were four cuts in a perfect star, covering the whole span of his palm. The ashwood blade kept the cuts from healing and his blood dripped to the ground.

The Lady wasn't done with him yet, however. She took his wrist and pulled him to press his hand into the rough wood of the apple tree by which they stood.

"There was a time," the Lady said, "when the heart of the Underground was the blighted orchard, but we have made this land better."

When she let go of his hand, he pulled it away and looked down at it. The cuts had healed, but in their place were hard black-ink lines like a tattoo.

The Lady turned her own right hand over, and across her palm were the same black lines. She turned her hand out so that her people could see.

"The oath is made here in the old world and in the new. You will be safe and welcomed in Velaris, as you were here."

There was a shift in the audience, but when the Lady brought her hands together before her in a supplicating gesture, they went still.

"I will no longer be your Lady after midnight this night," she said, and where her voice had been strong and cool when she had elicited Rhysand's oath, now it was warm and just a bit unsteady. "Know that wherever you go, you go with my blessing for you are my family. I ask only one thing of you: that you make the world you go to  _better_. As you have made this world better. As you have made  _me_  better."

The Lady lifted her newly-tattooed right hand and touched her first two fingers to the center of her forehead, then to her lips, then to the place between her breasts where her heart should reside. Then she bowed her head to her people.

Rhys watched as each citizen of the Underground made the same ancient salute to their Lady in turn.

She lifted her eyes to them- eyes which might be full of tears if changelings were capable of such things.

"Go then. Pack only what cannot be replaced, but help one-another. And know that I love you."

They went. It was slow, the way they went, in ones and twos. Some came to speak to the Lady or the humans before they went. All gave Rhysand a wide berth.

The Illyrian, Lysander, was one who came to the Lady. She took his hands, and he kissed her knuckles.

"Will you go to the Night Court, Lysander?" she asked, her face worried.

"And be enlisted in the army? I think not," he said, shaking his head sadly.

"Lord Rhysand would never allow-"

"Even if he did not, I should spend all my life having the citizens of Velaris look askance. I came to your kingdom to avoid that, my Lady."

"I am so sorry, Dear One. I would-"

"Hush now, Lady. Do you think I don't know what it must cost you to send us all away? What danger we must be in for you to have taken this step? It's I who am sorry it's come to this. You've enough to worry you. I will find a new life, never fear."

"Have you ever considered piracy?" Hook asked, joining them.

"My Lord?"

"You know I've a ship, Lad. I'm always in need of able-bodied… males."

Lysander smiled. "I am an artist, my Lord. Not a sailor."

"You've a decent hand with wood, perhaps I could make a carpenter of you. Or at least commission you for a figurehead- could you make one that looks like the Lady Swan?"

The Illyrian laughed. "I could, my Lord, yes."

"Well, think on it my lad. We'll be in the palace for a few hours yet. If you join the ship, there'll be no more 'my Lord's either. It's 'captain' or 'sir.'"

"As you say my- sir."

He left them then, looking happier than he had when he had found them, and Rhysand suspected they would leave the Underground with one more Illyrian in tow.

Rhys looked down at his hand. There was little grace nor artistry in the brand as there was when he elicited an oath. They were hard, visceral slashes, ancient and runic-looking. Still, he had expected it- it was custom in his world for an oath-maker to have a lasting reminder of their word. What was unusual was the Lady's matching mark- those to whom oaths were made were not branded in his world.

"Contracts are not so simple when they're made with Old Magic," the Lady said when he asked her about this. "Promises in your kingdom end with death, do they not? But why should you not still be bound to your word if I die, as well I might?"

Rhysand was surprised. "You think you'll die in the attempt?"

The Lady turned to look at her children and her mate who stood with Azriel talking.

"Far better my life than theirs," she said softly.

~?~?~?~?~

The Lady hated doing this: standing before the people she loved and telling them-

"You're sending us away, Lady Swan?"

Bertram stepped forward, seeming to take the responsibility- for all his youth- as the voice of the men of the Jolly Roger. They stood on the decks, the sea-brine wind plucking at their clothes as the Lady spoke to the crew.

"It is not safe to stay," the Lady said, a pleading note in her voice. "War is coming and-"

"And you're the one fighting it!" he interrupted. "The lad with the wings said that  _this_  was where you had sent your people- the ones from your kingdom. Are we not your men?"

"Of course you're not!" she cried. "You are free men! It's why you chose piracy!"

Bertram snorted derisively at this. "We pledged our honor to the Jolly and to you and the Captain."

"You pledged me nothing!"

He shook his head. "Of course we did, Lady. You're the Lady of the Jolly Roger, just as much as you were the Lady of the Underground, and we are your men. If there's fighting that needs to be done, we'll do it. Even if there isn't, we'll stand at your side."

The Lady looked helplessly around at the males who flanked her- Hook and Azriel and Lysander and Rhysand.

Hook only shook his head- he had told her the men would stay.

"Loyalty and honor are fine virtues in men, Lady Swan," Azriel said quietly. "Best not to send these away for showing it."

"If I am to be a member of this crew," Lysander said, raising his soft voice above the wind, "then I would add my voice to theirs and say that we stay with you, Lady."

To the Lady's surprise, the men of the Jolly Roger gave her the faerie salute of the Underground- brow, lips, and heart. They had seen her make it before, though they might not know the significance, still it acted on her like Old Magic.

"You may be queen of no land any longer, Lady Swan," Rhysand said, "but it would seem that you have a court whether you knew it or not."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **As I said last week, let's not forget that death isn't especially permanent in either ACOTAR or OUAT, particularly when the person dying is a pretty dark-haired ex-villain that we all love.**

Henry and Jacinda were in the Land Without Magic where their daughter attended university.

The citizens of the Underground were scattered, many throughout the city of Velaris, but others across all of the lands of Prythian.

The men of the Jolly Roger were camped outside of the city in a soldier's formation protecting at their center a large, swan white tent inside of which was a long table and a Faerie.

On the table before Lady Swan were laid the components of her spell: a great, wide-bottomed iron cauldron for the sympathetic link to the Cauldron she was meant to destroy, a branch bearing an apple from the heart of the Underground, a blighted branch bearing what appeared to be a perfect peach from the old orchard, and a long skein of silver thread.

Her hair was pulled away from her face in a tight knot at the back of her head. Her face was pale to the lips- only her eyes showed any color at all, and they were lit with the uncanny light of Faerie.

The front flap of her tent swung in as a man entered.

"I would prefer you were as far from me as possible," she said, her voice uninflected and cold.

"I told you I would be beside you every step of the way, Love," Hook said. "You've taken too many steps without me already. I'd be angry with you, but you've enough on your mind as it is."

"I can tell when you lie to me, you know," she said, and he did. "You are angry with me, even now."

"Aye," he said. "But I'm a sensible man and know when to pick a fight and when discretion is the better part of valor. Besides, I suspect you will be plenty angry with me as well when you see what I've brought you."

He placed the item he'd been holding behind his back on the table.

"Absolutely not," the Lady said when she saw what it was.

It was a fist-sized piece of wood which had been carved quickly and primitively into the vague shape of a ship not unlike the Jolly Roger. There was enough grace in the rude carving for the Lady to recognize Lysander's hand, and she knew that her lover knew enough about magic to be sure that the wood was from the ship herself.

"Hook, the Jolly is  _your_  ship. I can't-"

"The Jolly is as much your ship as mine, Swan," he said, taking her by the shoulders and forcing her to meet his eyes. "You said it to Rhysand yourself yesterday: she's your second home. If the Crocodile is right and saving the world requires you to be homeless, then she has to go as well."

"But she's your  _only_  home," the Lady said, desperately.

"Oh Emma," he whispered, drawing her into his arms. " _You_  are my home, Love. Wherever you are, faerie kingdom, pirate ship, house in the Land Without Magic, doesn't mean a damn to me. It's home if you're there."

"It could so easily go wrong, Ki-" the Lady began, but stopped when the tent flap moved again and the pair split apart.

They turned and were surprised to find the Lady of the Night Court enter.

"Lady Swan," she said. "Lord Hook."

She went to one knee and bowed her head, as Azriel had done.

"I beg you to forgive me," she said to the ground. "I didn't know what I had done when I nearly-"

"Oh get up, Child," Swan said, irritably.

Lady Night looked up, surprised. "I beg your pardon?"

"You've done that already. I've no stomach to toy with you today, and no patience for grand gestures. You were tricked by my uncle and ignorant of what harm you might do me. Take a care with what you know, and all will be well. Now get out, this place will not be safe soon."

Lady Feyre pushed herself up from her knees and raised her chin defiantly. "I'm not going. I want to help. I've power. A  _lot_  of power."

"Not the power I need," the Lady said shortly.

"I-"

"Lady Night, we meddle in  _Old_  Magic, and you fairly  _reek_  of newness! You smell like a spring breeze. Like freshly tilled earth. Like new snowdrops and crocus. I might as well call you Kore!"

Feyre glared from across the cauldron at her. "I am  _Persephone_. You gave me that name: Destroyer of Light, remember?"

The Lady glared at her for a long moment, then shook her head.

"If anything I do harms so much as a hair on your head, your mate will try to kill me, even if I survive this."

"No worries, Lady Swan," a voice from the tent flap spoke. "I'll stand between you and Rhys. I'm in better shape than he is."

"Azriel?" the Lady cried. "What are  _you_  doing here?"

The High Lady blinked in surprise at Lady Swan's use of her old friend's name, and even more so at his apparent pleasure that she had.

"It would seem that I will be standing between you and my High Lord to keep him from killing his savior."

"He would, the foolish boy."

Amren ducked into the tent behind Azriel with a smooth motion and small smile.

"It seems that this is the place to be. When do the fireworks start?" she asked.

"As soon as everyone leaves!" the Lady cried. "What have I done to bring you all here precisely where you might end up killed?"

"It would seem that you have inspired loyalty," Hook said softly.

"I must admit that I'm here as much for curiosity as loyalty," Amren said easily, leaning nonchalantly against a tent pole. "Not to say I hold any ill will for you, my dear."

The Lady let out a frustrated sound from the back of her throat, but Hook laid his hand on her shoulder gently.

"You'll not get rid of us, Sweet," he said. "If 'twere done, 'tis best 'twere done quickly."

The Lady was not best pleased, but gave in with bad grace. She shot an unearthly green stare around the room at those who would insist on remaining there with her.

"Stand back," she said, and her word was law. "You may not speak to me. Best you don't speak at all until it's well-begun. Once I'm in it, I doubt I'd hear an army come through, but the beginning must have full concentration."

She waited until she had a nod from every head in the room, and all had taken a step back from her then turned to her table.

She picked up the skein of thread first and began to roll it carefully, deliberately, into a ball. Every movement was precise: over, under, under, over. It was slow, meticulous work, and her watchers soon grew bored, but they did not move, nor did they speak.

As she rolled, the thread grew brighter silver for she was pouring her magic into it inch by inch, carefully stretching and feeding her power so that it would last the longest it possibly could. When she reached the end of the thread and her power, the ball was the size of the palm of her tattooed right hand where she held it.

Next she picked up the blighted peach branch, wrapped the loose end of the thread around it and looked inside of it for a long moment until it too turned into silver thread, then she began to roll it into the ball as well. She did the same with the apple branch and by the time she was done, the ball was so large her hand could barely span it.

She did not pick up the icon of the Jolly Roger. Hook made a soft noise of objection in his throat but a glare from Amren had him subsiding back into silence.

The Lady held the ball of shining silver thread over the top of the cauldron and began to unspool it slowly into the belly.

It did not look like anything for what seemed a very long time, then suddenly, between one heartbeat and another, the world seemed to warp in some great, indefinable way. Shouts came from the camp and the four observers exchanged startled looks, then looked to the Lady, but her eyes were far, far away.

The Lady was the Cauldron.

She had fed her power slowly into it, one inch of thread at a time until she had found the place where it was bound to the tapestry of the world and untied it.

She could see the whole of it- the true price she had paid. She saw Henry and Jacinda in the Land Without Magic, their immortality stripped away. Though they might have decades still to live, in the timeline of the Cauldron- in the great Tapestry of the world, they were already dead, for what is a human lifetime against eternity? Naught but a pinprick, really. Their lives were the price she paid.

She saw her people who she loved. She saw that some of them would die painfully in Prythian. She saw that some would go hungry. She saw that some simply would never be happy outside of the Underground. In spite of Rhysand's oath and Feyre's kindness, there would always be those who treated them ill, and that was the coin she had paid.

She saw the slow atrophy of Lysander's artistic skill, and that too she had paid to the great, hungry maw.

She saw the Underground itself. She saw the houses collapse. The castle fall stone-by-stone. The blighted orchard withered and blew away. The heart tree- the only heart she had ever had- grew twisted and dark. The apples rotted on the branch and fell into the pond, turning it sickening and black. The swans lifted from the water and flew into the unchanging grey sky trumpeting their distress- she had not thought of them! Had not thought to send them away, and they died for the world they had never seen.

The Lady tugged the thread which she had unbound from the tapestry and the Cauldron unmade, like a scarf which has been taken off of its needles, with one violent tug. It was nearly as simple as Rumplestiltskin had claimed it would be.

The she turned to the Tapestry, which she could already see beginning to weaken and unravel. She took hold of the end and began to weave her own silver thread through where the Cauldron's matte black threads had been, drawing tight those stitches which had become loose.

She reached the end of her thread far too early. There was so much more to do!

Suddenly, there was in the hand of the body which remained in the tent the small block of wood which had remained on the table. She transformed it without thinking into more thread and resumed her weaving.

Farewell to our Ship of Dreams, she thought. She could almost see it, the lovely blues and browns of it, out there on the tapestry. The memories from it would not leave. She did not unmake it, only paid it as a price to the world.

But again, the thread came to an end. She stopped her weaving, lost as to what could be done next. There was more to do- so much more. She could feel it unmaking even under her hands, and in her real body she could feel the tremors in her feet.

"Swan!"

The voice came from a great distance it seemed. It was familiar and so much beloved that she turned to it. Reached out. Gripped the heart which was hers and turned it into more thread. So very much thread. Perhaps enough to re-make the world.

She didn't mind, she thought as she resumed her work. She heard the body fall beside her distantly even as she continued to weave. If he is dead, so too will I be soon enough.

She was tired enough to die even then, but if she stopped now all the work, all the sacrifice would have been in vain. It would only come undone again, so she continued to weave.

She could see the end, there, only a little longer to go. Good, because her thread was coming to an end much too quickly. There should have been enough… why wasn't there enough? Stars and Stones, there would not be enough! What else was there to give? She had given her children, her home, all her magic, and her heart. What else was there?

A warm hand found its way into hers and to the Lady's surprise, it seemed that this hand was made of fine silver thread. It wasn't quite the same as what she'd been using- brighter, somehow. Stronger perhaps too. Not quite so fine, but perhaps better suited to finishing things.

The weaving must go on, and so it did. She came to the end and tied off that last piece of thread, cutting it off from the whole.

Then she was back, and the world remained whole and unharmed, except for her who now had no world at all.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Happy Angstday to all of you. I _told_  you it would work out...**

Whatever the Lady was seeing, Feyre could not see. All she saw was the tears which poured unheeded, seemingly unknown from the Lady's green eyes. All she could feel was the strange pull, as though her skin or her soul were being very carefully pulled away inch-by-inch.

She felt it when the world righted itself though, and when the pulling stopped so suddenly it might have been cut away by shears.

She saw the Lady return to her eyes and blink for the first time in several long minutes, sending another great rush of tears down her face.

"Killian," she whispered. Only that word, which Feyre wasn't certain was a word until she turned and fell to her knees beside the body of the pirate who had loved her.

It had been a gruesome thing to witness- the Lady had not been in her own face and so it was with apparent cold malice that she had reached into the man's chest and drawn from it his still beating heart, transmuting it into shining silver thread even as he had collapsed to the ground, his soul vanishing from his eyes.

"Killian!" she cried, cradling his face between her hands, bending over him so close they might have been kissing. "No, Killian, please! It wasn't meant to be like this."

Her tears bathed his face and Azriel came to her side and knelt down, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

"Lady Swan," he said softly, "he came to you so you would use him. Better him than all the world, he said."

He had. He'd tried to get her attention. He'd screamed her name half a dozen times as they'd felt the world shift weirdly when she'd reached the end of her thread. They had thought she couldn't hear until, suddenly, she'd turned.

"If he is dead then I should be dead," she said, her voice rough and hard as gravel. She looked up, her green eyes mad, and found Amren's. "When does Death come for me?"

"It won't, Sweet," Amren said. She didn't say it with sympathy, nor with malice. She spoke only the truth, simple and pure as a mountain spring.

"No!" the Lady screamed, a sound of deepest agony. "No! His life and mine were bound up together. If he died, I was to die, that was what we swore! I gave him my life!"

"And then you took it back and bound it up with the beginning of the world," Amren said. "You couldn't die now if you wanted to."

"I. Want. To."

"So I see," Amren said, and Feyre could have struck her for the casualness of her tone.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," the Lady said, and Feyre was reminded suddenly of the fact that Changelings could not weep. "I was never supposed to go on. If he died, I was meant to die. I never meant to be alone!"

"You won't be, Lady," Azriel whispered. "I swear it to you- I'll be with you."

The Lady turned into his arms and wept.

"I've killed him," she said. "I killed my True Love."

"Yes," Amren said, kneeling beside Hook's body across from the Lady. "You killed him, and now it's time to save him."

The Lady turned away from Azriel again to stare at Amren.

"What?"

"You took his heart. Now give him yours."

The Lady blinked. "I don't-" she stopped. "I don't-" she tried again, but seemed unable to continue. Her eyes went wide as realization struck. "Changelings don't have hearts," she whispered, because it was true.

Amren took her hand and pressed it between her breasts and those eyes went even wider before her hand sunk into her breast and withdrew a heart.

It looked nothing like a human heart, which is horrible and messy and strong- like humans themselves. This was like a piece of tarnished silver, all black and bright. It was a Changeling's heart. The first of its kind. Perhaps the last as well.

The Lady moved over the Pirate on the ground, straddling him as she pressed the silver heart into his chest. She left her hands over it once it was in and waited.

"Beat, damn you," she shouted at the body on the ground. "Curse you, Killian! You. Will. Live!"

And because she said it, it was true.

With a great gasp of air, the man on the ground began to breathe again.

The Lady leaned down, her face over his, as though proximity might give her more of him.

"Emma," he whispered, his voice hoarse.

"Killian!" she cried, still weeping those tears that shouldn't be possible. "I'm sorry, my love! I told you not to be here. I told you I might-"

He reached his hand to the back of her head and pulled her down to his mouth, stopping her apologies, her tears, everything with a kiss.

"You've saved us," Azriel said softly, and the two parted to look at him. "The both of you saved us. You're our saviors."

~?~?~?~?~

Killian stood shirtless before the long mirror in the rooms he and Swan shared in the High Lord's townhouse. He didn't look any different, so far as he could tell. Still devilishly handsome as ever.

In the weeks since he'd died and been reborn with a faerie heart, he had wondered. He had self-consciously tried to do some magic, see if perhaps with the new heart had come new skills, but, as he should have guessed, magic didn't seem to come from the heart. Swan had always had magic, and never before a heart.

And yet, he could feel each off-kilter pump of the strange new organ in his chest. It didn't hurt. If anything, it felt rather grand.

Swan slipped in the door and closed it carefully behind her. She had been watching him with a wary eye for days. Ever since he'd died. He supposed he couldn't blame her, but it was strange to have her look at him so. It wasn't affection or lust or love, but worry and even a small grain of fear in her fae green eyes now. He found he didn't like it.

"I think I've found… well I think I've learned something," Swan said softly. She and Amren had been scouring books of the Old Ways to try to find out what it meant that she had suddenly grown a heart and now it beat within his breast.

"Amren suspects that the heart…  _grew_  because… because sacrificing oneself for an entire world which is not one's own is not an action that a heartless creature could do. So it…  _appeared_  because I was selfless."

She shook her head. "Amren thinks that is sensible, but I'm not so sure."

"It makes as much sense as any of the rest of it," Hook said with a shrug.

"The exchanging of hearts is one of the Old Ways to create a mating bond," she continued. "Our way is also an option, but hearts is older. I was able to give you mine because you had already given me yours. And… well I usually don't need one."

"I'm sensing a 'but' here, Love. What's amiss?"

The Lady sighed. "It's a case of either/or.  _Either_  you trade hearts,  _or_  you give lives. You can't do both. I took my life back when I used it to weave the Tapestry. So… we're not bound like that anymore. I don't die if you die."

"If Amren's to be believed,  _you_  don't die at all."

"Killian-"

"Go on then, Love, say it all."

She shrugged. "There's not much more, really. If a Changeling heart is like other fae hearts, it will last much longer than a human heart. We're as near immortal as any creature can be, save Amren. But she's a very different sort."

"But I  _can_ die," Killian said.

"Yes, but someone would have to try very hard to do it. It's possible the heart can only be pierced by cold iron, so even being run through with a sword won't do it."

"Unless they go for my gut, as any good swordsman would do."

" _Killian_."

"Sorry, Love. I'm still getting used to it."

She stared at the ground for a long moment, and didn't look up when she spoke.

"I didn't give you a choice, Killian. Perhaps you'd prefer… perhaps you'd prefer not to live with a Faerie heart."

"Emma," he said, placing a finger under her chin and lifting her eyes to his. He was smiling. "I've always had a Faerie heart. Or else, for the last hundred years I have. Even when it was human and the one I was born with, it belonged to a Faerie queen. Does it worry you so much that you'll go on without me?"

"How could it not?"

He gave her a wicked smile. "I understand Azriel swore to stay at your side when you thought me dead."

"Killian."

"He's a good man. Male," he corrected. "You could do worse."

"Like a pirate?"

He grinned. "Perhaps so. Just think on it, Sweet. You might have two males with fae stamina in your bed if you wished it."

She laughed, and it was the first time since she had nearly unmade the world that she had done so.

"I love you, Killian," she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "More than all the world."

"And I love you, Emma," he said, his lips on her temple. "Far beyond the end of the world."


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quick housekeeping note about this story: for all intents and purposes, it is done! Next week there is a short epilogue, but that's where we leave it.**
> 
> **"But Wheel-" I hear you say, "-there are _five_  more chapters listed!"**
> 
> **You're quite right my dear reader. The four chapters after tomorrow's epilogue take place on the ship (to be mentioned below) with our favorite lovers and are almost all way sexier than anything I've written in a long time (for reasons that should be obvious by now, but I won't admit to in case the end of this chapter comes as a surprise to anybody). Those chapters don't really advance the plot, they only advance the relationship. That said, I like them all a lot, so I'm posting them and everyone can just live with that.**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday, Dearies!**

All of Velaris came to see them off. The tale of the world's near-unmaking had rushed through the city like a whirlwind, missing no corner nor ear.

The Changeling Savior. The Apple Blossom Princess. Lady Swan.

Her name was known everywhere, though not her face. Every blonde in the city had been scrutinized a hundred times since the day it had happened, but precious few could say they'd seen the lovely near-human face and uncanny green eyes of their Savior.

Azriel had, though only for a moment at a time, it seemed.

He didn't know what to say to her. His oath in the spell tent on that day seemed foolish and short-sighted in light of Hook's survival. He felt shy around the pair of them- what could they think of him?

And yet Hook smiled as easily as he ever had. The Lady spoke kindly to him on the rare occasion she found a moment to speak.

She seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at all times. Amren's apartment. The docks. All over the city. She was keeping tabs on the ship's crew, now without a ship, and her people, now without a homeland. Though she had no country any longer, she was no less a queen.

With Lysander at her side like a knight errant- page and protector in one- whenever Hook was occupied, Azriel felt oddly redundant and took to isolating himself in his own home.

It had been four weeks since the Lady had saved the world when Rhysand called a dinner for the Court of Dreams as well as Hook and Swan, who seemed to have become de facto members of the court in recent days.

At the dinner Azriel sat beside the Lady and was able to engage her in conversation for the longest time since the world had nearly unmade.

"I understand you have been at the townhouse less than is your wont, my dear," she said to him. "Are you well?"

"Well enough, my Lady," he said. He should have been more polite, he knew. He should have said more, he knew. He should have been jovial and kind and effusive, as Hook was on her other side, but all he could think as he sat in her presence was of his oath to her and the way it had felt when she had finally turned to him in the depths of her despair.

He was, he had realized in that moment, truly a despicable soul. Even if she could possibly want him, he would never deign to deserve her.

"Well enough," the Lady parrotted, her eyes grave. She watched him for a long moment where he refused to meet her eyes.

"Az," she said, lowering her voice so that with the other boisterous conversations about the table, she might not be overheard. "You said once that we were friends. If it is so, I would that you would speak with me and tell me true. Are you unhappy?"

She asked him for nothing but truth, and yet he could not tell her all of it.

"I am heartsick, Lady Swan-" he said, which was true enough, "-over all that you have lost."

The Lady shook her head, smiling sadly. "You come so close to the truth, Azriel," she said softly, laying a hand on his arm, light as a breath. "If you would only say it plain what you want, you might be shocked at what you could have."

Before more could be said, the rest of the table fell silent and all eyes went to the head where Rhysand stood, glass upraised to offer a toast.

"To Lady Swan, Lord Hook, and new adventures," he said with a bright smile.

Azriel glanced about the table to find faces as confused and blank as his own must be. No one seemed to understand what it was he was toasting save Feyre, who smiled knowingly.

Still, everyone lifted their glasses, including Swan who seemed rarely to eat or drink anything, and drank to the toast.

"High Lord," the Lady said, "your Low Fae  _bona fides_  are showing for you are cryptic in the extreme. What is it we are toasting?"

"Guess," Rhys said with a wicked grin.

The Lady only sat back in her seat and glared. Guessing games caused her to do nothing but stutter and choke, as Rhys had learned to his terrible amusement some weeks before.

He laughed. "No no, I'll tell you. I've got you a ship!"

Several mouths fell open about the table, including Hook's.

"A ship?" he asked, sounding disbelieving.

Rhysand seemed bursting with glee. "Yes, Hook. I shall call you Captain Hook again, for you have a ship!"

"She's not the Jolly Roger," Feyre said, "but she's made of Faerie wood, as the Jolly was. We've given her every comfort and advantage we could think of, but if you two have any further ideas, don't hesitate to ask."

"We've even named it," Rhys said, practically jumping up and down. "We've called it Changeling's Heart."

They'd gone that night to see it. She was a lovely ship, gracefully made, and seemed to compare favorably in the eyes of their saviors to their old ship of dreams, but it was like a child. When one is lost, the next, however loved and lovely, is not  _really_ a replacement for the first.

And so it was that the crew that had once served aboard the Jolly Roger, as well as a small number of the Low Fae once of the Underground, and the Saviors of Prythian were preparing to board the new ship that the High Lord and Lady of the Night Court had commissioned for them, witnessed by all of Velaris and cheered on by all of Prythian.

The time had come to say goodbye.

Azriel stood with the rest of the Court of Dreams, waiting for the Saviors to come to him, his heart aching as though it might stop entirely.

Hook took his leave of Rhysand but the Lady went first to Amren. They clasped hands only, those two strange females, and exchanged no words.

Before Morrigan, the Lady drew from the air a lumpy wrapped package and shoved it into the Mor's arms.

"It is a gown," she said quickly, "made to your specifications. Still I warn you that I am no seamstress, and you shall see the truth of it when you open it. For my sake, don't do so until I have left."

Mor had only laughed and kissed Swan on the cheek.

Before Cassian, the Lady hesitated.

"Should I be armed before facing you, Lord General?" she asked, and she seemed to be only half teasing.

Cas said nothing, only wrapped her in a great bear hug which lifted her from her feet with its exuberance. When he put her down, he placed his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes.

"Thank you, Lady," he said, earnestly. "Thank you for all you did for us."

Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss right in the center of her forehead.

The Lady was so taken aback that she could do naught but laugh- a heady, bubbling sound like magic and joy.

Next, the Lady embraced Feyre, and it was the first time that he had ever seen her reach out for any other creature, save perhaps her mate.

Feyre pulled back slightly so that she could look into the Lady's vivid eyes.

"Thank you for saving us," she said softly. "Being a savior is a hard weight to bear."

The Lady smiled. "Some carry such a weight on their back, my Lady. Some carry it in their bones." She straightened her spine subtly, which caused Feyre to straighten hers as well in response. The Lady touched her face. "You'll be a great queen."

"Thank you for my kingdom," Feyre said.

"Thank you for the strength to save it. You're woven into it now. It's more yours than it ever was before." She stepped back and swept a low curtsy to Feyre, as she had never done before. "Persephone, Destroyer of Light, and Queen of the Night."

Feyre caught her hand and pulled her up. "No, you'll never bow to me, Swan. And you may call me Feyre, if you like."

The Lady cocked her head like a bird. "Would you like me to?"

Feyre smiled. "I've become fond Persephone, really."

The Lady had kissed her cheek, promised to return, and moved on.

She approached Azriel last of all. She reached both hands up to cup his cheeks, looking deeply into his eyes.

"Dear Azriel," she said softly, "please be happy. Whatever it is you must do to be happy, I beg that you do it."

He said nothing, for she could not possibly know that he felt that the only thing in all the world which might make him happy was to scoop her into his arms and kiss her there and then in front of all of Velaris, including her bondmate.

And yet-

She went to her toes and kissed his cheek, the edge of her mouth just brushing his in such a way that made everything in him come up hard and tight and tense.

Then she was gone, and Hook was there.

"I said it to you in the Underground," he said, speaking low. "Love need not have a mating bond attached. Nor need it be between only two. I like you, Az. I'd not say this to one I didn't like. I'm a jealous man, but she… she's so much more than any other person in any other world. Because of that, I can be generous."

Azriel could not think of anything to say to this for so long, that Hook finally shook his head, smiling sadly.

"You'll please yourself then. I hope you do. We'll see you one day soon no doubt."

Then the Lady and the Pirate were boarding the ship, waving to the citizens of Velaris and sailing away toward the bright blue horizon, and Azriel felt like every foot farther they went, his heart unraveled a tiny bit, as though it had been made of thread which was tied to them.

A hand was suddenly on his arm, and Mor's voice was in his ear.

"Go," she said softly. "You'll never be happy if you stay, but you might if you go."

She was a prophetess, The Morrigan. She might be speaking the truth. Whatever was on the horizon could not possibly be worse than the emptiness Azriel could feel beginning to yawn over him as the ship grew smaller and smaller.

He took three long, running steps to the edge of the dock, then dove, catching himself on his great black wings and soaring out over the ocean toward his future.


	17. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Okay, y'all, this is the end of the story proper.**
> 
> **"But Wheel, you're never leaving it there!"**
> 
> **No, I'm not.  We're off to sea with our lovers for the next few chapters.  Things get pretty sexy from here on out (when they don't get angsty).  But for those of you who aren't into the smut, this is the end of the plot.**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday, y'all.**

Feyre paced the docks.

Azriel had arrived home the previous night after nearly ten years away, apparently unwilling to wait for the tides to bring him back to Velaris the more traditional way.

He had looked better than Feyre had ever seen him. He'd been happy, sun-darkened and windblown, but with a knowing smile that never seemed quite to leave his face. He was easier with Mor than he'd ever been, and when she deliberately baited him by flirting with Cassian, he had only watched with good humor and that knowledge glowing from his eyes.

He'd said the ship would arrive by early afternoon, but it was to the fates of the winds and sea for those without wings. Swan or Lysander might have come, but Azriel said it had been he who had been tasked with bringing word of their arrival.

So Feyre paced the docks.

"Look!"

She looked first at the source of the voice- the small child at her side. He wasn't quite four years old yet, with dark hair, grey eyes, and wings sometimes. When he wanted them.

Then she followed the direction of his chubby little finger and saw what he had seen.

The great masts of the ship.

It took another hour for the ship to come in, but come it did. Feyre had drawn the spyglass from her pocket at her son's first sight of it, but then it had been much too far away. Eventually she'd been able to see them: two figures at the head of the ship, one dark and one golden. The golden figure moving through the others, including one with great black wings, and climbing the rigging as though she were born to it.

Some things don't change.

Others do.

The ship slid in, was tied off, and the stairs were lowered, and when Feyre led her son up the steps to the deck, she found they were greeted by a small girl with dark hair and blue eyes and a serious face.

Though Feyre knew that Swan hated it, she took a deep breath. The child smelled strongly of Hook, and not at all of the Lady. When she found her old friend in the crowd she knew the question must be plain on her face by the way Swan's eyes were laughing.

Feyre ran to her and embraced her, almost surprised when Swan embraced her back.

"My dear Persephone," Swan said, holding her tight.

"Swan," Feyre said, then pulled back so she could see the lovely face clearly. "You have tales to tell!"

"As do you, Lady Night," Swan said, then untangled herself from Feyre's arms to curtsy before the child clinging to her skirts.

"High Lord Rhysand," she said. "I might recognize you anywhere."

The child's eyes went wide. "That's not me!" he cried. "That's my dad!"

The Lady gave a mock frown and looked at the child closely. "Is that right? I could have sworn you looked just like him! Though, now that you mention it, perhaps there are some differences. I think the High Lord has a much longer nose," she said, touching the childish button nose before her with one long finger. "And his smile isn't nearly so charming," she added when the child began to giggle.

"If you are not Lord Rhysand, then what should I call you, young sir?" the Lady asked.

The child glanced up at Feyre who gave him an encouraging nod.

"My name is Aidoneus," he said.

"And it is my very great pleasure to meet you, Lord Aidoneus," the Lady said gravely.

Feyre glanced at the child standing with Hook behind the Lady and Swan smiled.

"Dear one," she said, looking back to the girl with a smile. "Come meet the High Lady of the Night Court."

The girl stepped forward and curtsied gracefully. She was, perhaps, six years old and entirely human.

Feyre curtsied gravely to the child. "What may I call you, my dear?" she asked.

The child glanced at the Lady as Aidoneus had looked to Feyre.

"You may call me Alice," the child said.

"You may tell her your name, if you like," the Lady said. "She knows mine."

The child's sea-blue eyes widened in surprise. "You do?"

"Your… mother? Is a dear friend of old."

"Is that so, Mother?" the child asked.

"It is, my dear," Swan said. "Your father, Lady Night, and I once saved all the world."

The child nodded, absorbing this information thoroughly.

"My name is Tempest, but my friends call me Tempe," she said.

"And what would you like me to call you?" Feyre asked.

The child considered this question carefully. "You may call me Tempe. And so may you, Lord Aidoneus."

"Call me Aiden," the boy said. "Would you like to come to my home? We have tea and cakes!"

"I love cakes!" Tempe said, and for the first time she sounded like the child she was.

The two children led the way through the city as the adults strolled behind them.

"I can't wait to hear the story of how you come to have a fully-human child," Feyre said to Swan. She turned to Hook. " _Your_  fully-human child, unless I miss my guess."

"It's not nearly as sordid as you think," Swan said with a laugh.

"Azriel returns home looking as though he's finally learned what a bed is for other than sleeping, Hook has a child by a human woman, and you tell me it's not as sordid as I think!" Feyre cried, though she couldn't seem to help laughing either. "And I thought keeping track of a whole kingdom was complicated!"

"You don't know the half of it, Persephone," Swan said, wrapping her arm around her waist as they walked. "We've been traveling the realms and we found one where Hook- a different Hook- lived a different life."

She glanced at her mate, and he gave a sad smile. "His thirst for vengeance never led him to the Underground and Swan, so he spent a very long life with rum his only boon companion."

"There were women," Swan said. "He couldn't say how many. One of them was Alice's mother, he couldn't say who she was."

"Alice?" Feyre asked. "But I thought-"

"Alice was the name the other Hook gave her," Swan said. "Tempest was our name for her. She's never been christened, so neither name has the power of the Old Magic."

"Really?" Feyre asked.

The Lady just smiled enigmatically.

"We found him half-mad with fever and the child in his arms. He was trying to feed her milk from a cup, but he could scarce hold it steady," Hook said. "Swan took her from him, and she calmed straight away."

"We could do nothing for the other Hook," Swan said, and it was clear the failure still weighed on her. "Before he died, he compelled an oath from me, that I would care for her as my own."

"Only you?" Feyre asked.

"Only my word binds," Swan said. "Hook is lucky that little foible didn't come with the silver heart. Besides, she was his already. In a manner of speaking."

"She's beautiful," Feyre said to Hook.

"Aye," he said, "and too clever by half, which can be laid at her mother's feet. And her uncle Azriel as well."

"Yes, about Azriel-" Feyre began.

"No, High Lady," Lady Swan said primly. "Some secrets need not be shared."

"He is happy," Hook said, simply.

"He is," Feyre agreed. "And for that I thank you."

"No thanks is needed, " Swan said, "for we are happy as well."

"How long will you stay?" Feyre asked.

"Maybe a year. At least until your baby is born," Swan said easily.

Feyre stopped in her tracks, staring at Swan in complete disbelief.

" _My_  baby?" she cried.


	18. Starfall Redux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is your captain speaking, this piece of the story is a little sexy and OT3-y, so if either or both of those aren't your jam, bail now before the plane exits the runway.**
> 
> **These chapters just get worse from here (and by worse I definitely mean better).**

"Azriel."

He opened his eyes and found the Lady above him, her eyes like black emerald in the dark.

"Emma?" he whispered.

"Come," she said. Now that he was awake, he could see she was smiling. "I have a surprise for you."

"Do you need me?" Killian murmured from the other side of the bed.

"You may come if you like, My Love," the Lady said, "but this gift is for Azriel."

"So we've arrived then," Hook said. His voice remained low and rough with sleep, but was lucid enough.

"Yes, and just in time. Your navigation, as ever, is excellent."

"Go then, the pair of you. Leave your weary human to sleep."

The Lady smiled wider and kissed his temple. "Thank you. Now come, Az, you must see!"

She tugged his hand until he swung his legs out of bed and stood, following her into the room.

"It's cold, you'll need your coat," she said impatiently, "but hurry!"

Hook had turned over in the bed and Azriel could see the flash of light on his eyes and teeth as he watched the pair of them.

Finally dressed, the Lady took Az's hand quickly and pulled him out of their cabin, shutting the door behind them with a click as quiet as a sigh. Through the ship she led him. He thought she must be able to see in the dark, but it could have been only that she knew the ship as well as she knew anything in all the worlds. Her step was silent, and even her wool skirts did not rustle as she led him up the stairs at the bow to the main deck.

In the cold air, the Lady kept her hand tight on his as she drew him across the ship. The small nighttime crew only nodded their respect to their strange Lady and First Mate- both the lovers of their Captain and each other. All knew. None objected. Any crewman who might have done so was set off at the nearest port and made to forget all he might once have known about the Changeling's Heart.

"There," the Lady said once they had reached the stern, and pointed into the sky.

Azriel looked up and gasped.

The sky was filled with an unearthly light- blue and red and gold, but mostly as green as his Lady's eyes.

"Stars and stones," he whispered reverently. "What is it?"

"In the language of this world- well, one of them anyway- it is called the aurora borealis. More prosaically, the northern lights."

"Is it magic?"

She gave a small laugh. "No. Or else… only as magic as the dawn."

"It's beautiful."

"Yes," she whispered, turning her eyes back to the lights and they were lit purple and gold and green in turn. "I have seen so many things in so many worlds, and this is one of the most beautiful."

The two stood watching the lights for a very long, silent time.

"What is that sound?" Azriel asked. "Like a bell?"

"The lights are singing," the Lady said.

They were silent for another long moment, then the Lady reached out her hand and took Azriel's. Her grip was blazing hot in the bitter cold of the night, bright and burning as a flame.

"Hook could not abide the Underground," she said softly, "not for long, for there is no sky there. We could never stay more than a few months or years before it drove him quite mad and we had to leave for the ship. I went back, sometimes, without him, but never for more than a few days. I could not abide to be without him, and he could not abide to be without the sky. I should have known then that I would never get to keep it."

"My Lady?"

"Do you know what night it is," she asked, and there was a strange hesitancy in her voice, "back… back in your home?"

"In the Night Court," Azriel corrected. "My home is with you and the Captain for as long as you will have me, My Lady."

"It is Nynsar, Azriel," she said softly.

"Oh."

The news seemed to drop into his stomach with a weight like lead. It would be the first time in centuries he had not witnessed Starfall with Morrigan and Cassian at his side.

The Lady turned to him, taking his hand up from his side and wrapping her other hand round it so that even his much larger hand was completely encompassed in her warmth, then she bent her head and kissed his fingers.

"My sweet Azriel," she murmured against his hand, "I never want you to count the cost and find it too dear for what you have received," she said.

Azriel turned and added his free hand to hers so that they held each other- his hand, hers, his, and then hers. She lifted her eyes to his.

"My Lady," he asked softly, "do you mourn the Underground?"

"Every day," she whispered earnestly.

"Do you regret the choice you made?"

"Not for an instant," she said, and because she could, it was true.

"Then you know my answer, Emma," he said, voice so low that none aboard would be able to hear but she.

He lifted a hand and cupped her face, then lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.

_He remembered the first time he had ever kissed her. That first night he had arrived aboard, the Lady had drawn him into the cabin she shared with the Captain. The man himself had followed and shut the door and turned the bolt with a decisive click behind himself._

_Azriel had wanted to say… something, though precisely what, he could not have said with a knife to his throat._

_The Lady had taken matters into her own hands by rising on her toes to press her mouth to his and he had been lost in a moment. She had tasted of ashwood and he had thought she would bring him to his knees by her mere kiss._

_It hadn't been he who had gone to his knees that night though, but the Lady, much to Azriel's shock._

" _My Lady," he had said, "you are queen here. You kneel before no one."_

_She had looked up at him from below, her smile puckish in the fading light._

" _I kneel before whom I deem worthy," she had answered. "And you should call me Emma."_

_Before Azriel had been able to come up with some answer to that, she'd had his trousers open and his cock in her mouth._

_No ashwood arrow to the heart could have undone him so quickly. Her mouth was hot as an inferno and it was like making love to a volcano- something ancient, elemental, and deadly._

_Just as Azriel had thought he might go mad with the sweet pleasure of it, there had been a hand stroking across his wing, and he had jumped. Hook stepped back, looking ashamed._

" _I'm sorry, Az," he'd said. "I should have asked."_

" _No," Azriel said, surprising even himself, "you needn't stop."_

_He'd never been with another male. He knew those who had, and though he knew many who loved each other deep and true, still it had always felt to him a little prurient and shameful._

_Hook's warm hand over his wing felt anything but shameful, however. Females, where Azriel was from, had hands soft as flower petals and gentle as butterfly wings. Hook's hand was rough with callus, broad and strong. Then, the gently lethal feel of the tip of a steel hook running along his other wing undid him, and he came with a shout of surprise._

_He thought he should blush- he hadn't lasted even five minutes- but the Lady had sat back on her heels grinning so proudly, and Hook had stroked his hand over Azriel's back so gently that Az could feel nothing but sweet pleasure._

_The Lady had then ridden Hook's cock as Azriel stroked her breasts, then Azriel had used his tongue between her legs, reveling in the taste of both of them as Hook's mouth had sought places on her body learned through long practice._

_He knew the pair were bonded to one another, as though an unbreakable chain tethered them one to the other. It might have made him feel singled out, and yet it seemed, when he came between them, that he interrupted nothing. Rather, the bond seemed to pass through him as well, as though he were a bead on the chain._

_Hook's hand had guided Azriel's over the Lady's body that night, but when they had fallen asleep, their fingers had linked over Hook's stomach rather than the Lady's. She had not shared the bed with them through the night._

" _She doesn't sleep," Hook had said softly. "She dances with the stars most nights."_

"Starfall is a night for lovers to dance together," Azriel said, lifting his mouth from the Lady's.

"I used to love to dance," the Lady said. "When I thought I was human and all those handsome suitors came hoping to win the hand of the fair princess… Then one midsummer in the Summer Court ruined everything."

Azriel squeezed her hands in his. He would gladly destroy any creature that had ever hurt her, and yet…

She kissed his hand again, and he calmed. It was as she often said- what was done was done, and nothing more to be done about it.

"I dance now with the crew," she continued, "with you, with Hook… but not on Nynsar."

"Then I say it is long past time that you danced at Starfall with someone you love," Azriel said.

It was a dangerous thing to say, and he knew it. She was bonded to Hook and she could not lie, and he wanted badly to know-

The Lady unwrapped her hands from his and for an instant Azriel's heart failed him, but then she turned and put a hand on his shoulder and slid the other into his.

"Would you dance with me on Starfall, My Love?" she asked softly. "It is a night to dance with someone you love."

For the first time, Azriel realized that she too was putting the question to him. They had never said it to each other, but it was Starfall and the lights in the sky were singing, and she was asking as he was.

"Aye, My Lady," he said, and his voice was thick with the words. "I'll dance with you."

There was no music but the strange unearthly bell of the aurora, but they swayed together beneath the lights for a terribly long time, then the Lady took his hand and led him back to the cabin.

Hook was sitting at his desk frowning over maps and papers and looked up as they came in.

"You did not go back to sleep, Dear One," the Lady said, bending to kiss his cheek.

"I no longer sleep well in that bed alone," Hook said. "But you have returned, perhaps my mind will rest easy now."

"Dance with me, Killian," the Lady said. "It is a holy night in Faerie. A night to dance with those you love."

Hook seemed unperturbed by the abrupt change in subject, only smiled at his Lady.

"All the world I would give to you on a silver plate," he said, shaking his head, "yet you never ask me for anything that is not a pleasure. How have I come to be so lucky?" Then he stood and took her into his arms and began to sway with her. He began to sing after a moment, a low, chanting song, like a lullaby or a spell.

After a long moment, the Lady turned in her Pirate's arms and held out a hand to Azriel, inviting him in with them. And the three swayed together on that night of lovers, intertwined and endless.


	19. The Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is another sinful chapter in the lives of our new favorite OT3 we never knew we needed, Emma/Killian/Azriel.**
> 
> **Do enjoy.**

The deck of the Changeling's Heart crashed and clanged around Killian as his men drilled with their swords. He had paired like with like skill and set them practicing their thrusts and parries.

A great shadow passed overhead and he looked up to where Azriel and Lysander dipped and swayed through the air, almost as though they were dancing. The younger Illyrian was no fighter, but Az had been teaching him the rudiments of defense from the air in a patient but ruthless way.

Killian's hands itched for his sword hilt. He could call for a challenge from his men, but only one sword on the whole ship consistently held against his own, and the arm that wielded it was not to be found on deck. He frowned at the lack.

Azriel landed at his side, as though he knew Killian's thoughts, and pointed up past Lysander who continued his drills to the cross-beam of mast on which the great sail hung.

The Lady stood there, back to the main deck, face in the wind. She held a rope, but Killian suspected it was more for form's sake than for actual balance- the wind wouldn't dare to blow her down, even as it streamed her skirts behind her.

She was beautiful and unearthly as a figurehead, but somehow distant and lonely as well, and Killian would not see her so.

"Swan!" he cried over the noise and clamour around them. "Come! I wish to test my sword against the best!"

She turned a neat pirouette on the cross beam and looked at him, her hand still light on the rigging.

"Do you challenge me, Captain?" she called.

"No!" Azriel shouted, placing a hand on Killian's shoulder. " _We_  do! Two against one, so it might even be fair!"

Az had tested her sword once. The fight had lasted nearly eight hours until even Azriel's great strength had failed him. The Lady had not landed a blow, but neither had he, and she was eternally tireless.

Killian suspected together they were more than a match for her, but their Lady was a proud creature. Even now he could see the smile growing across her face as she contemplated them from her perch so far above.

Too proud to turn down a challenge, and too curious to deny herself a new experience, the entire crew gasped when she pushed off from the sail and into the air.

~?~?~?~?~

The Lady heard their gasp even as she swung out above them in a lovely arc, still holding the rope she had used to balance on the sail. It swung her neatly toward the rigging, which she grabbed with acrobatic grace, and climbed down with facility.

Azriel met her at the bottom, plucking her from the ropes by her waist and setting her gently on the deck. Killian was below fetching her sword and dagger, and Lysander and Bertram were herding the men away from the center of the deck to leave a large enough space for the fight to take place. She could hear the gold changing hands among the men- it seemed to sing in her pirate's blood- and wondered how they calculated her odds.

"Are you prepared?" Az asked, his voice low and his head bent close to her ear. "I suspect that, between us, Killian and I could quite have you at our mercy."

A shiver ran down the Lady's spine. This was  _not_  a weapon she had anticipated they would wield against her.

The Captain appeared again on deck with the Lady's weapons, and she could feel the weight of his blue gaze as she stood with Azriel's hands at her waist and his head bent intimately low above hers. Az straightened, and the prick of the Captain's eyes seemed to leave the Lady, and when she turned to look, the males were sharing a speaking gaze as he crossed the deck to join them.

"My Lady," Hook said, bowing as he offered her sword. He did not straighten his spine, but he looked up at her with laughing eyes as she stepped toward him. They were not fighter's eyes, but bedroom eyes, and the Lady thought, for the first time, that she might be in over her head.

As anticipation and arousal gripped her in equal measure, she knew that she would not back down.

The Lady took her weapons from her mate and spun away from him, taking her place on the west side of the deck so that the setting sun was at her back. She knew it would not remain so for long, but at least to begin, she would take every advantage. It would seem her males had every intention of doing the same.

She turned away from them as she drew her sword and dagger, and she could hear them preparing themselves, speaking too quietly for her to hear.

"Is there a forfeit, Captain?" a crewman called out- an older, irreverent soul.

The Lady turned and raised an eyebrow at the males, as interested in their answer to this as the crew.

The Captain appeared surprised at the question, and frowned seriously at the Lady for a moment.

"All I have is my Lady's," he said, "and Lord Azriel has nothing to begin with, so what could she ask of us?"

The Lady smiled, slow and feline. "What, indeed?"

"But what if  _you_  win, Captain? Will you not ask a forfeit of the Lady?"

"We? Win?" Hook asked, as though he had not thought of it before. He turned to Az. "What might we ask of our Lady if we win, Lord Azriel?"

"Is a kiss not traditional?" Az asked with mock seriousness.

The Captain's eyes went wide as though this were a new, exciting thought. Both men turned slowly toward the Lady, grinning like fools.

"Aye, my friend, so it is," the Captain said. "If we win, we would ask the Lady to grant a kiss to each of us."

"Aye, but  _where_?" one voice called from the crowd, sparking ribald laughter.

The three combatants did not laugh.

"In our cabin, of course," Hook said over the laughter, which only redoubled it.

"Is it agreed, Lady?" Azriel asked.

"I will grant your forfeit, if you win," the Lady said, and her word was truth.

"And if  _you_  win?" Az asked.

"I wish to go ashore for a time," the Lady said with a smile. "I wish to have an  _adventure_."

The Captain nodded. "It shall be as you say, my Lady. If you win."

"And have we rules for combat?" the Lady asked. "Or shall we fight like pirates?"

Azriel grinned. "Why pretend to be anything other than we are? Though I think, perhaps, we should seek to avoid maiming one-another."

"Fight like a pirate but spill as little blood as possible?" the Lady asked, one eyebrow raised and a smile growing across her face. "You've still a lot to learn about being a pirate, my lad."

"Brave words, Lady," he said, his voice going soft and low. "I suggest you gird yourself."

The Lady turned her dagger back-handed over her left arm and lifted her sword, widening her stance and shifting her weight to the balls of her feet.

" _Je suis prest_ ," she said, and it began.

At first it was easy. She knew them both- the way they fought, the way they thought, and the way they moved. She could anticipate them.

There- advance two steps, and thrust, catch the sword from your left on your backhand blade and turn with the longsword to slash at his retreating form. Turn again and catch the second blade in the V of your crossed blades, throw him off, then retreat three steps, turn, and face them again.

She was one with the boards of the ship as she stepped over them, her bare feet knowing each one. She heard nothing but the rush of their breaths and the thrum of their hearts and the near-silent swish of air as their blades came and the song of steel when she caught them against her own.

Step. Step. Duck. Turn. Thrust. Catch. Roll. Stand. Turn.

She felt the instant it happened, like a change in the air, and she knew.

Often and often in their bed, two would together turn their attention to the third, focussed only on the pleasure of the one. It was sensuous and overwhelming to be at the mercy of two skilled lovers whose only interest was your pleasure, particularly, the Lady suspected, when it was at her altar that the males worshipped.

Both loved her- had loved her first and longest, only coming to love the other through her- and when they came together with only her pleasure in mind, it was as though they were not two but one- one mind, one goal. Nearly a thousand years of experience pleasuring females between them, they could leave their serene Lady screaming and crying- their proud queen begging.

When she turned and saw in their eyes what she had never seen there before outside the privacy of their cabin- a single accord, one mind with four arms, Fae strength and cunning, human ingenuity, cat-like swiftness, and a millennia of skill- the Lady knew that she could lay her blades down on the deck now and the outcome would be the same.

She did not.

Some might look at the Lady rushing into a fight she knew she must lose as pride, and it was that. The Once-Queen of the Underground did not go down without a fight, even when the battle was already lost.

She knew, however, that it was not only pride that had her meeting their flashing blades with her own, now faster and more determined than ever. They gave her, time and time again, the pleasures of their love. Now she would know the pleasures of their fury.

The Lady returned to the fray. Though she knew how the fight would end, it hardly needed end quickly. Though they were quick and skilled and strong, so was she, and as she spun to catch Hook's sword and his flashing blue eyes, she could see that he knew the same thing that she did: the climax would be all the sweeter for the spice of anticipation.

She turned to find Azriel's sword, which she parried away. His eyes were dark with arousal and he bared his teeth in a furious, joyful grin.

The Lady ducked and swept his feet from under him, but when she might have threatened his prone form, Hook was between them- forcing her to retreat as Azriel rose again.

The pair of them were relentless, but the Lady could feel them holding back. She tried to take advantage, but they met her blow-for-blow. They were toying with her now. Delaying her gratification and theirs. She could see the sweat beading on their skin, feel the heat rising from them as they danced in and out from her never close enough to touch. She could smell them, and it was an intimate smell- bitter and salt. A male smell. A  _wanting_  smell.

She was a dervish, but they were a match for her and more. The crew had long since faded from her mind, as had the competition. Her world was only these males and the clash of steel against steel, and the inevitable conclusion.

It should not have been a shock when it ended, but somehow it was. The Lady had not advanced a step in some minutes, but only retreated- back and back again- from their onslaught. One more step back and she was brought up short by the railing that enclosed the deck. With her back to the wall she could only hold out another few moments. Finally, like a single entity they surged forward, each taking one hand and pinning it to the railing to stop her blades, each holding his own blade to her throat.

A cheer rose up from the crew as the three stood still.

The Lady looked up into the eyes of her lovers and saw that all four were focused on her and so dark with desire that their usual color was completely subsumed. The three combatants stood still, barely breathing, knowing that the slightest movement- even a hint of friction- and it would come apart there.

Damn the crew, they would fall upon each other.

So they remained still as the breeze blew across the deck, cooling the sweat on the males' faces. The Lady did not even blink, unsure that she could stand it.

Finally, Hook took a long, shaky breath, and turned to his men with a smile.

Azriel took a second more, never once taking his eyes from his Lady, then turned and accepted the handshakes and back-slaps of his companions. It took some minutes before the victors noticed a quiet awe washing over the men and turned to see what had so startled them.

The Lady of the Changeling's Heart, the Former Queen of the Underground, and the Rightful Heir of Misthaven was on her knees on the hard boards of the deck, her dagger laid out in front of her and her sword held across her two palms. She did not bow her head, but met the eyes of her Captain with serene directness.

"My Lady?" he asked, stepping toward her with Azriel on his heels. "Swan, what-"

"Do you recall the day we bonded?" she asked, cutting him off.

He frowned. "I could hardly forget," he said. "What-"

"On that day, I promised to be your sword. To be your Lady and your protector. I have been bested this day, and so you might choose another, if you wanted."

"It was not single combat!" Azriel said, looking shocked. "It cannot count!"

"War is not single combat," the Lady said softly. "I swore to protect against anything."

"Swan, what are you doing? I-"

"Captain," she interrupted him again. "I  _promised_  you. I made a  _vow_."

That brought him up short. Among the Fair Folk, vows and promises were not to be taken lightly. If she was offering her sword to him, he should not dismiss her.

"I have kept that vow for a hundred years and more, but on this day I was bested. You must tell me," she continued, her face serious and serene, though he knew her well enough to hear the fear beneath her cool tones, "if you would have another protector."

"I would have no other," he said. "My Lady, you are my left hand, and I would trust none at my back but you." He held her gaze for a long moment. "And I would trust none to guard your back but Azriel," he continued, glancing up at that male who looked surprised to be included in this strange ceremony. "And none at his back but I. So you see, Love, the three of us must remain together, else someone be left vulnerable."

He smiled and offered a hand down to her, then lifted her as she took it. "Come, Sweet. You are tired, and it's long past time we were abed."

The sun had barely kissed the horizon, but all aboard ignored this fact as the three lovers descended belowdecks. None believed them tired, nor that sleep was their goal.

In the cool dimness of their cabin, the Lady turned toward her males who stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the door as though she might try to escape.

"A forfeit was promised," Azriel said, his voice soft and low, and his eyes heavy-lidded.

"Was it?" the Lady asked, her own voice silky. "Remind me."

"A kiss," Az breathed.

"Location unspecified," Killian said with a wicked smile.

"Ah yes, I do recall," the Lady said with a matching smile. "So where was it you wanted your kiss then, oh hearts of mine?" She stepped up to Azriel and went on her toes so that her lips were less than a breath from his and whispered, "on your lips?"

She could feel his mouth open, but before he could give in to his desires, she dropped to her feet again, and moved to Killian.

"Perhaps you would prefer here?" she asked, angling her head so that her breath whispered over the sensitive skin beneath his ear, and he shivered.

"You have a sensitive neck, Shadowsinger," she said, moving to Azriel again and breathing against the column of his throat.

"Or perhaps here?" she asked moving to Killian again and tapping his left breast. "Over the heart that is mine?"

Killian wrapped his hand around her wrist, quick as a snake, binding her.

"Pleasurable as that might be, my Sweet, I had a different place in mind. Emma," he said, and he eyes were nearly as cold as the steel with which they had fought so recently, "kneel."

Her eyes blazed hot as fire as she did his bidding. Using her name to force her compliance was not his way, but she could see now what she had not recognized before. The fight had brought forward not her gentleman lover, but the legendary pirate who would take what he wanted and damn the consequences.

He had not ordered her silent, nor to keep her magic in check, nor even to stay on the floor. The Lady remained free, but she also remained on her knees before him, a strange and shocking heat coursing through her veins. Never, in all hundred years she had known him had she felt this way. It was thrilling and terrifying and all-consuming. It was not, perhaps, a feeling for every day, but on this day she would drink it up and grow drunk on it.

"Emma," he said, and his voice was the low growl of a jungle cat, "undo my trousers."

She balled her fists at her side and resisted, though she knew she must obey. Her blood turned to fire in her veins until she stopped and reached for him, and the relief was nearly as great a pleasure as what she knew would come.

He was hard beneath his clothes. She suspected he had been nearly since they had begun fighting. He was long and thick and ruddy with blood. She met his eyes, though she did not touch him. The game was to do as he said and no more.

"A kiss was your forfeit, was it not, Lady?" he asked. "Emma, answer me true."

After a moment's hesitation, she nodded.

"There's a good girl. You'll kiss my cock, just as you said you would. And then you will take it into your mouth and you will make love to it until I cannot remember my own name, but I'll remember yours. Won't you, Emma?"

The form of the order was different. He knew she didn't have to obey.

He knew she would.

As though she were still resisting, she waited another moment before nodding. Then she ran her tongue over her lips and placed a damp, open-mouthed kiss over the head of his cock.

Killian let out a hiss of breath, and Azriel grunted. Emma tried to turn to see if he was well, but Killian tangled his hand in her hair and guided her face back to him.

"One at a time, Love," he said. "Az'll get his once I've had mine."

Her attention centered again on his cock and she opened her mouth and took him in.

His order had been for her mouth alone, and in the interest of the game, she kept her hands in her lap. She moved slow and steady up and down the shaft of him. He gripped her hair, trying to push her faster, but she resisted. She was stronger than him in this.

He might have ordered her faster, but she knew he would not. The commands had been a game- dangerously thrilling, but with rules he would follow to keep her safe. He would command her do nothing that she could not find a way to refuse or refute.

Emma was tireless. She moved slowly over him, never driving him all the way to the edge, but changing her pattern so that he was never quite ready for it. Because it made him gasp, she hollowed her cheeks and sucked him deep. She brought him as deeply into her mouth and throat as she could, then stilled with him inside her until he let out a low whine from the back of his throat.

He had thought himself the commander, but Emma had power here as well.

She quickened slightly- not as much as he might have wanted, but enough that he clenched his hand in her hair with a sharp pleasurable pain.

When his climax came, it seemed to take him by surprise. She had remained slow and methodical until the end, building the fire until it blazed so bright it might have consumed them both. Killian didn't cry out, he roared, and Emma wondered vaguely if Azriel had cast the silencing spell he sometimes did to keep the crew from running to see what was the matter.

The fires of Hell wouldn't have the crew knocking on their door this night. Not after the display above.

She sat back and looked up at Killian, but did not rise. The game was not yet over.

He was breathing hard, his head against the wall, sweat standing on his skin as though he'd had the fight of his life. His clothes were un-rumpled, even to his coat, save that the laces of his trousers were un-done. He made a picture, and one that the Lady thought she would carry with herself into eternity.

Finally, after some long moments, those thick, dark lashes rose and his blue eyes found hers.

"Go to Azriel, Emma," he said, the form of the order such that she could do as she wished. "Go to him and love him."

This time she did not hesitate, but turned and stood in a single motion.

Like Killian, she was fully dressed and her clothes were un-mussed. Only her hair showed any signs of what had transpired, rumpled where Killian had buried his hand in it, but barely a toss of her head set it right.

Azriel, on the other hand, sat gloriously nude on the edge of the bed, his wings slightly extended, his great flushed cock in his hand.

He had watched her suck Killian's cock and stroked himself to the sight. The thought was delicious and wicked, and Emma thought she might combust from the heat of it.

He was beautiful, with his pale skin and black tattoos dancing over his shoulders and chest, his wings dark as desire. Emma's fingers itched to trace the ribbing in his wings and the paths of the tattoos across his skin. There'd been little touch in Killian's game, and her skin suddenly hungered for it.

"Azriel," she said softly and nothing else. It was his to give her the rules.

"Come here to me," he said, gesturing to the space between his knees. "Please."

A different game than Killian's and with the 'please' she did not hesitate.

Rather than tell- or request- her to kiss him, Azriel instead reached for her clothes and began, carefully, to undress her. He opened the closure on her skirt and allowed it to pool to the floor. He then slowly lifted her shirt over her head, gentle as if she had been a child. He tossed it to the side and beheld her then for a moment.

She wore only a chemise and stays beneath her clothes. Azriel reached up and began, deliberately, to unlace the front ties of her stays.

Emma's skin sang, desperate for a touch, but her chemise remained in the way. The stays dropped to the floor and Az reached for the ribbon at the top of her final garment, gave it a gentle tug, and watched as the fabric fell from her as if by magic.

"Ah," he sighed as though the sight of her were as sweet as release.

His hands on her hips gently urged her forward and she stepped so close she knew the heat from her body must be melting into his. So close that when she looked down into his face, she need barely bend her head to kiss him.

He smiled, seeming to read her thoughts and bent his head away from her to plant a kiss between her breasts where, had she a heart, it would beat.

His touch seemed to spread across all of her skin and she gasped.

"Azriel?" she whispered, already breathless.

"Mmm?" he murmured, his mouth traveling across her chest to her breast.

"Your- oh- your kiss?"

He didn't raise his head, only lifted his lashes so that she could look into his eyes.

"In time," he said, his lips not leaving her skin. "First I want…"

He trailed off, but his hands were insistent. They gently pushed on the backs of her thighs so that she brought her knees up on either side of him, straddling him there on the edge of the bed.

"That's it," Az murmured. "That's it exactly."

"Az-" she began.

"Emma," he said, leaning back so that he was looking directly into her eyes, "please?"

Again, the 'please' spurred her onward, and she allowed him to fit himself into her and slid onto his cock in one smooth, slow motion.

She was wound so tight that the very act of seating inside of her brought her climax roaring forward. As she gasped through it, Azriel rained kisses over her face, but never once touched her lips.

After a moment, but not nearly long enough, he began to move her- his hands at her hips lifting and rocking her without her volition.

"Azriel-" she said, her eyes opening to meet his.

"Please!" he said through his teeth. This time it was no tease, but a true plea.

Emma began to move over him of her own accord. He did not want her kiss- not yet- so she set her hands on his shoulders and used his own great strength as her leverage. Her fingernails dug into his back and her thumbs traced the lines of tattoo over his collarbone. Her lips burned for him, but she held herself away.

His eyes were fixed on hers, diamond-hard and intense.

She lifted one hand from his shoulder and stroked over the top of his wing.

Azriel growled and stood, turned, and laid her back against the mattress, without ever once breaking his connection with her. He took one of her legs and lifted it high so that the back of her thigh and calf were flush with his chest. It kept his skin far from her lips as he pounded into her.

He seemed to know when she again came close for his face went focused and hard, and just as she began to shake around him, he let out a shout and thrust even harder into her, spurring her on, which only made him shout again, louder, longer.

Emma's vision went black- she saw stars and galaxies be born and die in that place of glorious release and love.

When she opened her eyes, Azriel was laid out beside her, watching her. Once he saw her see him, he leaned forward and brushed his lips, ever so gently, over hers.

"Your forfeit is well paid, my Lady," he said.

Behind her, Emma felt another body join them in the bed. She turned to meet Killian's eyes.

"Emma," he said, and all traces of the cold pirate were long gone. "You are the most magnificent thing in all the worlds," he said, reverently, stroking down her body until he found her hand, then bringing it to his lips to grace with a kiss. "I love you so, My Own."

"And I love you," Azriel said, kissing her temple. "You are more to me than the stars in the sky, Dearest Emma."

She took their hands in her own.

"You are my heart," she said, kissing Killian's knuckles, "and you are my life," she continued, kissing Azriel's. "Without you, I am incomplete. You are the best of me, my dear ones."

The Old Ones do not sleep, but that night Emma closed her eyes between her heart and her life and was at peace.


	20. Punishmen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is a long one, and it's filthy.  Nobody pure of heart or mind should read it, but you degenerates are welcome to it.**

Captain Hook stood at the wheel of the Changeling's Heart, his face impassive, his hands steady.

It wouldn't do, he thought, to betray worry or fear. No doubt his men assumed it of him, but he need not confirm their suspicions, so he kept his brow un-furrowed and his eyes to the East.

Lysander arrived from the West, the first back.

When they arrived in a new realm, three scouts were sent from the Heart in the three directions which the wind was not blowing to scout for land. Ship's Hand Lysander and First Mate Azriel soared out on their great, powerful wings, and the Lady of the Changeling's Heart transformed herself into a proud swan and flew away trumpeting.

An hour out, he had told them, and an hour back. Azriel had argued for two hours- their wings were strong and they, each of them, had near-endless stamina, but Hook had insisted. Night seemed to be falling faster than expected, and he wanted his crew whole.

He wanted his  _family_  whole.

"Sir," Lysander said saluting him neatly. "I'm afraid I saw nothing on my scouting, Sir. No land at all."

Hook nodded and clapped the lad on the back. "Good man," he said and pushed him gently toward his mates on the deck, all of whom would question him thoroughly, though he had seen nothing.

It was only to be expected. Finding nothing was no great trial. If none of the three scouts found anything, they would simply sail through another portal on the morrow and try again.

Though he knew it would betray him, Hook could not seem to stop himself glancing over his shoulder and gauging the distance between the sun and the horizon. The Lady and Azriel were late.

It was nearly another twenty minutes before the trumpet of the swan which heralded their Lady's return could be heard. She sailed over them, white as an angel, then with a weird twist of reality, settled onto the boards of the deck as herself once again.

The men rushed toward her, asking her questions, checking that she was well.

The Lady smiled gently at them, but answered none of them. Instead she turned toward the Captain, catching his blue eyes with her own faerie green ones.

He left his post at the tiller and walked toward the Lady, face unsmiling, until he stood before her, just a bit too close.

The men stepped back, leaving the two to say what must be said, though not out of their hearing.

"You are late, my Lady," the Captain said, his voice soft and dangerous.

The Lady lowered her eyes and bowed her head slightly.

"I know it is true, and it was my own fault, though I knew it would worry you."

"Why did you do it, then?" he asked.

"I found land, and I wished to see if it was inhabited. I took more time than I was given, but I have good news: it is. I found a large village about the leeward side of the island, Captain."

"We might have found that information out for ourselves, My Lady, and had you home betimes."

The Lady's eyes lowered again. "As you say. I am sorry I was late, My Love." She lifted her eyes to his again. "Will I be punished then? Flogged?"

The Captain's mein finally broke, and he smiled at his Lady.

"I've half a mind to take you over my knee and spank you."

The Lady's eyes went wide with shock and interest, then glanced covertly to the side where the crew pretended not to listen.

"Here? With all your men as witness?"

"No," Hook said, his voice low and dark as the depths of the sea. "With your fine fair arse beneath my hand, I will need my bed far closer than this."

A ripple of laughter went through the men, which was silenced by their Captain's sharp glare.

"That said," he continued, lowering his voice still farther- not that it would stop the crew from hearing- "you were far less tardy than our Azriel. Perhaps it's his arse I'll blister, and your punishment will be that it was  _not_  yours."

The Lady began to smile, slow and sensuous.

"Let it never be said that you are not a cruel pirate. Would I be allowed to watch?" she asked. A whoop went up from one of the men, but was quickly hushed by the others.

"What would be the point if you didn't?" Hook asked, leaning close and barely brushing his lips over her ear. "I may be cruel, but I am no monster."

The Lady grinned, feral and wanton, then turned and walked away from him, her head held high and her hips swaying.

Hook watched her go, half-hard, and more-than tempted to grab her and drag her back to their cabin. His men grinned at him like baboons.

"Have you miscreants nothing better to do than stand about, or need I order the whole of the ship spit-shined by morning?" he growled.

The men dispersed quickly, but the grins did not.

All it took to clear the Captain's head was a glance at the empty Southern sky.

It was nearly another hour before a man keeping watch from the mast cried out a warning. Every eye on the ship went South and saw there a deeper darkness in the lowering sky.

From the tiller, the Captain saw his man, then turned to his crew again to seek out his Lady. There she was, climbing down the rigging so quickly that her feet touched the boards of the deck at the same moment that Azriel's did.

She ran toward him, and the Captain expected her to throw herself into his arms with kisses and pets.

Throw herself into his arms she did, but with her fists.

She slammed the sides of both fists into Azriel's chest with all of her weight and speed behind them, causing the tall Illyrian to step back from her onslaught.

"Lady-" he began, but she spoke over him, her voice high and thin as the crew of the Heart had never heard it before.

"How dare you?" she shrieked, rearing back for another attack.

Az caught her fists in his hands, holding her off.

"You could have been captured!" she cried, squirming to get out of his hold, a wild creature. "You could have fallen into the sea and drowned. You could have been lost! How  _dare_  you?"

"My Lady, I-"

She wrenched herself free and stood back from him, her shoulders back, her chin proud, her eyes blazing.

"What would I have told your queen-" she asked, her voice no longer hysterical, though the fury in it made it shake, "-when next we went to Prythian?"

"You would need tell my  _queen_  nothing, My Lady," Azriel said, finally showing the wisdom to stand back from her, "for it is you I call queen. Only to you do I kneel."

The Lady stood, still as a statue for a long moment, then turned and stormed away from him. She began to climb the rigging, not stopping at the great cross-beam of the mast, but up and up all the way to the crow's nest.

"Best leave her be," the Captain said, when it looked like Azriel might fly up to her to continue their fight.

Az turned toward him slowly, face carefully blank.

"Are you going to shout and strike at me for being late as well?" he asked carefully.

"Do you know," Hook asked as he began to slowly saunter toward his lover, "that when I saw her running for you, I expected her to kiss and stroke you sweetly, leaving me to be the villain who must tell you how wicked you were for worrying us. But My Lady was kind- to me, if not to you- and left the kisses and pets for me." By the time he had reached this point, he stood before Azriel, close enough to touch. He reached up and laid his hand on a strong cheek and drew Az's lips down to his own for a slow, sweet kiss. "I am glad you're home, Love," he said after a moment, only drawing his lips away enough to speak.

Az kissed him again, then straightened and stepped back, First Mate again, ready to make his report.

"I found nothing to the South, Captain," he said, simply.

"And yet you stayed away nearly twice the time proscribed," the Captain said, his voice carefully neutral.

Az's face twisted in irritation. "I told you, Captain," he said, no longer looking sheepish as he had since he'd arrived, "that I was more-than capable of staying out longer and looking farther. Four hours in the air is nothing to me."

"And yet I gave you an order," the Captain said quietly.

Az stood for a moment with his mouth hanging open, and Hook shook his head.

"Enough," he said, waving his hand through the air. "We shall discuss this later. You have duties that require your attention." Then he turned and walked away from Azriel.

~?~?~?~?~

Azriel looked up as the door to the Captain's cabin opened and the Lady stepped in.

He had been sitting on the edge of the bed for hours now, only staring at his hands, as Killian sat at his desk and pretended to study maps. They had spoken little- nothing at all since Az had asked if they were going to bed, and Killian had said that no, they must wait on Emma.

She had finally arrived, and Az and Killian stood to greet her.

"You are awake," she said softly, stating the obvious truth.

Her voice no longer shook with fury, but she did not meet Azriel's eyes for more than a moment before she transferred her gaze to Hook, who had rounded his desk to her.

"We were waiting for you, Sweet," he said, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles quickly.

"For me?"

"There is punishment to be meted out this night, is there not?"

The Lady's eyes flickered to Azriel again, then she lowered her lashes and bowed her head slightly.

"As you say, Captain."

"There's a good lass," he said, and his voice was warm and soft as caramel.

"If I remember correctly, My Love," Hook continued, "your punishment was that you were not to be allowed to participate in Azriel's, though you may watch."

"Aye, Captain," she said.

"Let it stand as a warning to you, Sweet," he said, his voice lowering even further, "what is done to those who do not heed my orders."

"You should not tempt me to rebellion, My Love," she said, a wicked smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

"As though you need my prodding," he said, a laugh clear in his voice. He lifted her hand and kissed it again, then turned from her to Azriel, laughter gone from his face, though his eyes remained bright.

"As for you, My Lad," he said, his voice more business-like, "I should like for you to take off your clothes."

Az hesitated for a moment. He'd not been on the receiving end of one of Killian's devious games before and yet, as he looked into his lover's dark blue eyes, he found he could not be nervous.

He removed his clothes with economy of motion, then stood and faced Killian and Emma. Az had no shame of his naked body, but as he stood there, under their eyes, he suddenly felt the weight of each piece of clothing the pair of them wore, and each piece that he did not. He felt unaccountably exposed, as even nudity could not make him. Though he was taller and stronger than either of his lovers, he felt oddly vulnerable.

"Kneel, please, Az," Killian said quietly.

This time he didn't hesitate. This was familiar. Killian's cock was a known quantity. Known. Loved. Desired.

If this was Killian's idea of a punishment, it was no punishment at all.

"On all fours, if you do not mind," Killian said.

"What?" Azriel asked, though only because he had thought he'd guessed the direction this night would take.

"On all fours," Killian repeated. "Arse in the air."

This too was known. Azriel settled himself in a comfortable position with his elbows on the decking. He could not see all of Killian now as he came closer, walking around behind him, but if he turned his head, he could meet Emma's eyes.

Her face was impassive as she watched them, but her eyes gave her away. They were wide, dark, and unblinking.

Suddenly Azriel jumped and cried out. For some moments, Killian had been stroking his ass and lower back, gentle as the lover he was, but then he had landed a blow on Az's left ass cheek that must have taken all his strength.

He was up off the floor in a trice, standing glaring at Killian who did not look the slightest bit sorry.

"What the hell do you think-"

"This is your punishment, Lad," Killian said without apparent malice. "Or did you forget that you flouted my order today?"

He should have known that a fuck would be no kind of punishment to Killian.

"And you think I will allow you to beat-"

"Swan," Killian interrupted, "am I  _beating_  Azriel?"

"No," she said simply. "It is bed play. More to the point, he likes it."

"She cannot speak an untruth," Killian reminded Az needlessly. "Not that the latter was in any doubt." His eyes trailed down Azriel's body, slow as a caress, until they rested on his cock which was still hard as steel.

"On your knees," Killian said, his eyes returning to Az's. "It would be ten strikes with a lash, we'll see if you wish me to stop after ten this night."

Az stared for a long moment. He could not deny that the place on his ass where Killian had struck still tingled with warmth and awareness. Finally, almost against his will, his knees bent, and he resumed his prone position.

Strikes two and three he bit his tongue, swearing he would not cry out and be unmanned again. Then Killian came around and knelt beside his head.

"Look at Emma," he whispered in Az's long, pointed ear. "Watch her watching you."

Az turned his head and saw her there. Anyone who did not know her might think she was dutifully watching a rather dull play in her modest, full-skirted dress with her hands folded neatly before her. Az knew her well, however, and could see the brightness of her eyes and the color suffusing her cheeks. When Killian struck him a fourth time, he saw her suck in a breath so that her breasts strained against her bodice, and Az groaned.

From then on he watched her watching him, and her avidity compounded the pleasure that he felt, while knowing she was watching him increased the humiliation, which, somehow, increased the pleasure yet again. Az couldn't help but wonder if something was misaligned in his brain to feel so, and yet as Emma licked her lips with her small pink tongue, he could not seem to care.

Killian's tenth slap made Az close his eyes tight. He thought he might come, and his cock had not been touched all night. He simply could not stand that final humiliation, and instead he held his breath and waited for the feeling to pass.

When he opened his eyes, Killian and Emma were kneeling at either side of his head. He turned to face Killian.

"You did well, Lad," he said, stroking his hand through Azriel's hair and then rubbing his neck gently. "Come on then, no need to stay on the floor." He offered his hook, and Az took it, using it to push himself up with Killian's help.

"If you do it again, Az," Killian said as he lowered him into the soft chair behind the Captain's desk, "it won't be bed play. I'll have to lash you properly, out before the men."

Az met his eyes, shocked.

"I'm Captain here," Killian said, his face and voice serious. "I cannot stand for insubordination from my crew- even you. Especially you. You need not agree with every order I give. You may argue with me out of sight of the men. But when the order is made, you must follow it. Do you understand?"

A hot well of shame rose up in Azriel's chest. He knew the dynamics at work here- he had been in the army all his life. How could he have treated an order so cavalierly?

He knew the answer, of course. He had thought of Killian too much as his beloved, and not enough as his Captain. He had to remember that Killian was both.

"Aye, Captain," he said, softly. "I'll not do it again."

"Good," Killian said, and Azriel thought that must be that, until he spoke again. "I'm afraid your ordeal is not yet over, Love," he said, stepping back so that Emma could step forward. "It was not only me that you hurt this day, but our Lady as well."

"Don't look like that," Emma said softly. "I'll not lay a hand on you, not even if you beg."

Az blinked, and she smiled, her teeth sharp and wicked.

"I am going to make love to Killian," she explained slowly, as though to a child. "You are going to watch us, but you will not be allowed to come. Not this night. Not all of tomorrow."

"And tomorrow night?" he asked, his voice strained.

She smiled that dangerous smile. "Tomorrow night will care for itself, I think."

That was decidedly  _not_  an answer.

She did not seem perturbed by her own cryptic nature, however and only spun away from him toward Killian who sat on the edge of the bed which Az had recently vacated. He reached for the Lady's hand and drew her toward him, pulling her down to sit on his knee, then drawing her face down to his to kiss her thoroughly.

Az watched the pair of them, as ordered. He was suddenly overcome by an awareness of just how beautiful they both were.

Before the Lady had stormed into his life, upsetting his world and threatening his wings, he would not have said that he was especially partial to the look of humans. He'd had no great aversion, but when faced with a lifetime of perfect Fae beauty, who would care to look on a human?

Then the Lady had appeared and those fae-green eyes had looked into his soul and somehow, though he hadn't known it was there, had found the empty space and made a home in it.

He wouldn't have thought that the part of him that was empty could be large enough for two, and yet when he looked inward at the throne of his heart, there sat Killian along with Emma, perhaps wound together- as they were now before him- always with the implicit invitation that he, Azriel, was welcome.

Now, even when he thought of Morrigan's fine features- those he had thought were burned onto his eyes with their perfection- they seemed blurred and dull.

The Lady pulled away from Killian's kisses gently, though he chased her lips with his own. Finally his eyes fluttered open, and she smiled.

"Help me with my dress," she said softly, rising from his knee.

She turned her back to Killian, and turned her eyes to Az.

She blocked Killian from his sight, so he couldn't see what was done, but he could see the effect: how her dress loosened slightly then, all at once and as if by magic, it fell away to the floor, leaving the Lady-

"Stars and stones," Az whispered at the same moment that Killian groaned, "Gods, Emma."

She was wearing what amounted to three scraps of lace over her breasts and center. Az had been to Henry's World now, and knew of these types of garments, and yet seeing their modest Lady in them could be more arresting even than seeing her naked.

The Lady smiled a warm, female smile.

The white lace made her skin look rosy beneath, and the peek of hair at the apex of her thighs was liquid gold.

Hook's hand came around to her flat stomach- his skin dark against her paleness- and pulled her back toward him.

"Do you know what it does to me to see you in these?" he asked, his hand trailing over the top edge of the drawers.

"Of course I do," she said, and there was deep satisfaction and pride in her voice. "Why else would I wear them?"

Suddenly the Lady turned, quick as a snake, and snatched Killian's hook to hold it away from him.

"I think not, My Love. These are not easily replaced." She stepped away from him. "Besides, I think you're quite overdressed for the occasion. It's well past time you undressed."

As Hook rose, Emma turned and crossed the room to Azriel, stopping before him close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin.

"Will you help me with my underthings, Az?" she asked, her eyes holding his mercilessly.

It was torture she had in mind, Azriel was sure of it. She'd said she'd lay no hand on him, but like her kind, had not said he would not have his hands on her. He could touch her, but could have no relief.

She was crueler than Killian by half.

She waited, patient, for him to respond, and Az realized that it had been a choice in fact. He could deny himself and her- go to sleep without the shape and heat of her in his hands. Wouldn't it be a kindness to himself to do so?

And yet, as she must know, he could deny her nothing.

Her skin was satin when he set his large hands on either side of her waist, then stroked up the sleek curves of her to her breasts. His thumbs circled before he smoothed his hands back to unhook her brassiere.

She stood still. She did not shiver or moan, but neither did she breathe or blink.

When the bra fell to the floor, he began a slow slide down her back until he had her lace-covered bottom in his hands. After a moment he hooked his fingers into the waist of her pants and drew them slowly down her legs.

When she stepped out of them, she stepped away from him, and Azriel knew that was all he would have of her that night.

"Heartless," he called her.

She only smiled, and turned back to Killian who now sat naked on the bed, watching them.

Emma marched across the room and, upon reaching Killian, pushed him backward onto the bed with a smooth motion so that he lay back with his feet still on the floor.

Az could hear his low laugh as he fell back with a slight bounce against the mattress, and something in the sinuous way that the Lady moved told him that she, too, was smiling.

He could not see their faces, but he could see Emma's ass and the pink lips of her quim between her legs. He could see Killian's cock, flushed and ruddy. He could see the long, slow slide as he disappeared inside of her.

Az clenched his fists so that his nails bit into his palms, hoping that the pain would keep him from running quite mad at the sight. He'd watched them make love before- of course he had- but it had never been like this. He had always known that his time would come, or that his time had been. He'd never been merely observer.

It felt wicked and sweet. Though he felt like a voyeur, could he be when he knew that what he observed belonged to him?

Even now, at this distance from them, they were his, and he was theirs. They were as aware of him as he was of them, and they were putting on a show- he could tell.

Emma stopped with a hand on Killian's chest. Though he cursed, she climbed off of him gracefully, then turned. Then, facing Azriel, she lowered herself back onto Killian's cock.

Az wanted to echo Killian's low moan, but he found his throat would not work. He simply could not breathe. She began to make love to another male's cock as her eyes held Azriel's.

His world contracted down to nothing but her: the darkness of her eyes and the heaviness of her eyelids, the short, sharp breaths through her red lips, the sway of her breasts, the play of muscle in her thighs, and the slick, near-magical vanishing and reappearing of the red cock from between her thighs.

Azriel thought he had never seen anything as arresting as Emma in that moment. But then the next moment she lifted her right hand to her mouth, licked her middle finger, and then brought it down to that sweet spot at the top of her slit and began to stroke herself.

Az's vision tunnelled. He would die if he did not breath soon, and yet his lungs refused to hear his brain, and nothing- not even his death- could tear his attention away from his Lady now.

Her color was high and her movements were frantic. Her glassy eyes remained fixed on him until suddenly they closed and he could see the tension in her every muscle. Killian cursed, but Az could  _see_.

Silver gilt her skin and for the first time, Az understood what she had always said: that she was not simply a creature who wielded magic, but that she was a creature that  _was_  magic. As she lost herself to pleasure, the edges of her mask blurred and she became like the universe: vast, dangerous, and wild, and Az could only wonder that she was his. It was like owning the entire night's sky.

Then he blinked, and she was herself again, though the silver goddess she had been remained imprinted behind his eyes.

Her eyes remained closed, though her muscles began to loosen. Killian sat up and wrapped his arms around her as she remained in his lap.

Finally she opened her eyes, blinking slowly. She found Az first and smiled, then she turned and kissed Killian, slow and languorous and sweet. Then she rose from his lap and gathered her dress from the floor.

"You should abed, my loves," she said as she pulled the dress over her head. It did not escape Az's notice that she wore it without underthings now.

"You'll not join us?" Killian asked.

"No," she said, simply. The laces on her gown tightened themselves without her touching them, and she turned to Az. "You will remember?" she asked, not bothering to explain what he must remember.

Every part of Azriel ached with wanting. He thought he might go quite mad with desire- he knew he would never sleep- and yet he nodded. He had seen her true, and he would deny her nothing.

The Lady simply nodded and slipped from the room.

She left a long silence in her wake. Killian shifted on the bed until he was laying on it properly, but Az did not join him immediately. He thought it would be harder to lie beside his lover in his state, and wondered if it would be difficult for Killian as well.

"Our Lady is crueler than you are," Az said finally.

"The punishment must fit the crime," Killian said. "You did her a great evil today."

Az sat up straight, shocked. "I did what?"

Killian turned to him frowning. "What?"

"You  _said_  it! You said I did her a great evil. I know I worried her, but-"

"You don't know?" Killian asked, looking incredulous. "You don't know what all this has been about?"

"I flouted your order and-"

"And terrified Emma," Killian finished for him.

"Terrified?"

Killian sat up and stared at him in disbelief. "After all this time, do you truly not realize what you are to her?" he asked. "Do you think yourself a pretty boy for her bed? You're no more that than I am!"

"Of course I don't," Az cried. "I know she loves me as I love her. As I love you."

"It's more than that, you fool! Has she not said it a hundred times? You are her life!"

Az shook his head. "That's not anything serious. It's pillow talk."

Killian flew from the bed as though he could not contain his fury and frustration any longer sitting still. "Emma is not capable of saying what she doesn't mean! You know what she is! How could you consider her words anything less than pure truth?"

"What does it mean?" Az cried.

Killian turned to him, color high in his face, but his voice was low. "Do you not know what frightens Emma more than anything in all the worlds? What she dreads?"

"Harm coming to any that she loves. You. Me. Henry, Jacinda, and Lucy."

"But don't you see what is at the heart of it? Why she fears it so?" Killian shook his head at Az's blank expression. "Emma's greatest fear is to be alone."

"I don't understand," Az said, though he thought he was beginning to.

"When first I met Emma, we found out that we were fated to be True Loves," Killian explained. "We did not love each other then- we did not  _know_  each other hardly. But she gave me her life, her sword, and the kingdom of the Underground there in those first moments. She did it so that she would have a companion into her eternity." He shook his head in wonder, then met Az's eyes again. "You know how that ended. She took back her life and her immortality to mend your world, and gave me a gift unique in all the realms instead. I count it more than fair, but she would not, were it not for you. You who we love and who loves us. You who were born to immortality as she is, rather than borrowing it as I do. I won't last forever, Az." He gave a small smile. "Don't look like that, I don't intend forever to end anytime soon, but know this: it will end for me. And when it does, it will be  _you_ who remains."

Az couldn't quite take it in. They had been together nearly four years, and he had never realized, but both Killian and Emma thought he had.

"I wouldn't trust my wife to just anyone, Az," Killian said, drawing him from his reverie. "Only you, for I love you as much as I love her, and I know that you love her as much as I do. Come now… is it any different than you had planned anyway?"

And there it was, for of course he had never intended to leave Emma's side for his whole eternity. She was his, and he was hers, and they were Killian's. The thought of losing him was so horrifying, he suddenly realized why the Lady had punished him so thoroughly.

"So now you see?" Killian asked.

"Yes," Az whispered. "I see." He stood and began to gather his clothes.

"You're not coming to bed I take it?" Killian asked, smiling.

"I must find her and apologize," Az explained, pulling his trousers on. "And to you. I'm sorry, Killian. I didn't… I didn't realize all of it. The orders, yes, but not the rest. It won't happen again."

"I know. Go on then," he said, resuming the bed. "She won't join us here tonight- to do so would be torture for you, and she wouldn't treat you so ill, but she'll hear your apology."

Az nodded and left the cabin.

She was where he expected her to be- seated on the cross-beam of the mast, nearly as close to the stars as she could be. He was beside her with a single beat of his great wings and settled onto the beam far enough away that they would not touch accidentally.

"Emma," he said, voice low so as not to be overheard over the lapping of wave and creaking of wood.

"Azriel," she said, her voice low and melodious.

"You've told me many times before that I am your life," he said. "I did not know what it meant until now."

"No?" she asked, a note of surprise in her voice. "I am sorry, I thought you did."

"I know, and had I thought it through, I would have. But I know now, and know this, Emma my love: as I am your life, so too are you mine, and as I would protect you, so too will I protect myself for your sake."

There was nothing between them but the song of the sea and the ship and the stars for a long moment then, barely audible above all of it she spoke.

"Thank you, Azriel."


	21. Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Whelp, that's the end of that one... And what a journey it's been.**
> 
> **If you liked this but thought it needed more domestics and snark, I'm 50k words into another about this same bloody OT3, but taking place in Storybrooke in a world where Season 7 never happened. I don't know when it'll start going out, but probably early in 2020. It's not a matter now of not knowing where it's going, but of finding the time during finals and holidays to actually write it.**
> 
> **I hope you all have enjoyed this story. Goodness knows I have! Look me up on Tumblr, I'm asthewheelwills, and I'm trying to figure out Discord too (that's not going well, i admit).**
> 
> **Happy Fanfiction Friday, and happy holidays if I don't come back before then!**

The house was tiny. In fact, "house" was, perhaps, too grand a word for it. It was a shack.

The Lady marched up to the door and rapped on it with her knuckles, one-two-three-four, a short staccato burst. Polite and insistent.

The three stood for a moment, waiting, as nothing happened.

Azriel gently nudged the Lady aside and knocked himself, using the meaty side of his fist. One. Two. Three. Menacing and impossible to ignore.

And yet, ignored it was.

Hook shrugged. "It's my place, isn't it?" he asked, and grabbed the door's handle.

"We don't know-" the Lady began.

"I'm not sure-" Az said.

Hook ignored them both and put his shoulder into the door, shoving it open. It hadn't been locked, only hampered by the sticky floor.

The inside was even less preposessing than the outside. It was a sty, smelling of filth and illness and rum. The fire had been lit some hours gone, but was burned down to sullen embers, leaving all else in darkness.

Azriel waved his hand and the fire sprang back to life, lighting the space. In a chair in the middle of the house sat what might be a pile of rags, but the Lady knew better.

"Killian," she cried, her voice half-strangled in her throat. She rushed to the pile and knelt before it, and it moved.

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." The voice was horribly familiar and horribly changed. "Are you the angel sent to take me to my death?"

That face. It was more horrible than the voice. Azriel could not look at it for long. That beautiful face ravaged by time and illness and pain. It was not the lines that made it terrible, nor the streaks of white through the hair, nor the dulling of those summer-blue eyes. It was the sheer misery writ over every inch that unmanned him and made him avert his eyes.

The Lady was braver and met his eyes without flinching.

"I am no angel," she said.

"What are you then?" he asked.

"I am yours."

He gave a single, barking laugh that turned into a dry, wracking cough that lasted too long.

"What happened to you?" the Lady asked when the cough finally subsided and he had wiped his mouth with his filthy sleeve.

"Revenge," he said, his voice slurring. "Revenge and rum. They eat you up from the inside if they are your only companions."

He closed his eyes for a long moment after these pronouncements and seemed, almost, to have fallen back asleep. Then they opened again, some lucidity behind them, and narrowed slightly at the Lady.

"You are beautiful," he said again, and his voice was somewhat closer to the voice they knew. "And you say you are mine?"

"I am."

He shook his head. "Just my luck you would come too late. I can give you nothing, Love, not even myself, for I'm not long for this world."

"I'd take you with nothing, Killian," she said softly. "I'd take you poor and broken. You are my True Love."

"True Love is the greatest magic in all the realms," he said softly, "but even it cannot reverse death."

"Sometimes it can, Mate."

The voice made both the Lady and the Killian in the chair jump. She seemed to have forgotten there were others in the room, and he hadn't seemed to notice.

He looked up and met his own eyes, though these were in a face less-ravaged by time.

"Ah," he breathed, slumping back into his chair. "Good to know that some version of me made better choices. Got my happy ending."

Before Hook could say anything a cry wrent the stillness in the house like a blade. It was a high, piercing, hungry, thoughtless cry. A babe's cry.

"Alice," the older Killian said, moving as though to rise, though pain lanced across his face as he moved.

"Stay," the Lady said, putting her hand on his chest. "I'll get her."

Near the fire in a pile of rags, the child squirmed. She couldn't be but three months old and had a pinched, hungry look. She smelled of ammonia and filth and the sea.

She was Killian's child.

The Lady picked her up and the novelty stopped her crying for a moment.

"Hello Beauty," the Lady crooned down at her. "Hello Little Storm."

When the child was settled, she brought the babe to her fathers.

"Do you want her?" she asked, offering her to the Hook who was seated.

"I-" he began, then looked away from her in shame and held up his hand which shook with palsy. "I cannot feed her."

"I will," the Lady said softly. "Milk?"

Hook's eyes cut to a table across the room where a glass bottle sat atop. "It is fresh from this morning," he said.

The Lady nodded and carried the child over to it.

"I'll do it," Az said, intercepting her there. "You should be with him."

"Alice," the Hook of the Changeling's Heart said, turning to his doppelganger. "Our mother's name."

" _I_ ," the strange Hook said, "have never known another lady whose name was worthy to give my daughter."

"Who is her mother?" the young Hook asked.

"I do not know. I can tell you little of the last year- I've spent too much of it drowning in rum. She might have been one of a hundred girls, or no girl at all. She might not be mine."

Az and Emma met eyes. They could both smell the sea on her- she was Hook's child right enough.

Emma handed the child over to Azriel, helping him to adjust his hold on her so that he supported her head. Once he had her in hand, the Lady plucked the air and drew out a pristine white handkerchief.

"It is clean," she said, handing it to Az. "She won't drink, so dip it in the milk and let her suck it off. It's not efficient, but it will do until we can find a better solution."

"As you say, my Lady," he said, softly. Then, more softly still, "is it him if he'd never found you?"

The Lady looked back at the two before the fire and sighed.

"If he'd never found  _us_ , Az," she said softly. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Revenge is no boon companion, not for so long."

She left him there with the child and returned to her knees by the dying man.

"Are you a witch?" he asked, when she returned.

"I'm a faerie," she said. "Does it matter?"

"It would seem not," he said, reaching forward to cup her face with his hand. "My mother warned me not to love the fae, but I was never wise enough to heed her."

"I am grateful," she said, then turned her face and kissed his palm.

"Have you children?" he asked, his eyes flicking to his standing counterpart, then resting again on her.

"I raised a lad once," she said. She would give him no half-truths or tricks. "A human child stolen away to Faerie. He is as dear to me as a son, but I have never born you a child. I cannot- there is nothing in me for a babe to hold onto. All that I am is malice and magic and mischief."

"Lucky then that those are things I have long loved," he said, his voice growing slurred again.

"Killian?" she said, her voice holding a note of panic.

His eyes opened again, and he smiled slowly at her. "I like my name on your tongue. It sounds like magic."

"Killian," she said again, then reached up and touched the dimple that appeared in his cheek when he smiled. "Tell me what I can do for you. Only say the word and it is already done."

"They say the fae cannot lie," he murmured.

"Some can," she said, "but not I. What is it you want of me?"

His eyes opened again, and for the first time she saw the fire in them.

"Care for my Alice," he said, and it was a command, not a plea. "I know that she is not yours, but see that she is cared for, fed, taught. Loved, if you can manage it."

"You foolish man," the Lady said, her voice soft, "she is mine already. You swore to me, more than a century gone, that what was yours was mine. She is yours, and so she is mine. I will care for and love her not as though she were my own, but  _because_  she is my own. As you are."

"Ah Sweet," he said, and stroked his thumb over the apple of her cheek. "What is it I call you when I drift to sleep in your arms? Whose name is my lullaby?"

"Emma," she said. "You call me Emma."

"Then kiss me, Emma, and I will die a happy man."

She rose and seated herself in his lap. She held her own weight carefully on the arm and back of his chair until she was sure he could take her then settled against him, easy and slow. His shaking hand rested on her waist, and his tarnished hook settled on her thigh.

His lips were dry, and his breath was sour, but he was her Killian and his kiss was known. She deepened it the way that he liked, brought her hand up into his hair and stroked her thumb over the lobe of his ear and smiled when he gasped into her mouth.

After a long few minutes, she eased away from him, just far enough that she could watch his eyes flutter open, and see his pupils wide and wanting.

"Perhaps I'm not so near death after all," he murmured. "I hadn't thought I could want so any longer."

"You'd be a year dead and if she kissed you like that, you'd still get a cockstand," the other Killian said darkly.

"Your man is jealous, Sweet Emma," the dying man said, even as he gently shifted her off his lap.

"He's a fool," she said, sliding back to her place on her knees before him.

"At least he's your fool. He has his happy ending. Tell me about it, Emma. Tell me the happy ending."

"It is happy," she said. "More so than we deserve, pirates that we are. We sail beneath a hundred skies and see a thousand thousand stars. We bow to no king and swear fealty to only those we love. Azriel is with us- he loves us and will love our daughter. He will teach her to fly and fight and disrespect her parents. You will teach her to gamble and dance and sail and lead men. I will teach her the secrets of the fae: of stars and stones and magic. I will charm her eyes to see through their glamours and enchant her ears to hear their tricks. I will give her a second name so she may never be under their control. And someday she will leave us, and our hearts will weep then. Our hearts will rejoice then."

She gripped his hand where it had fallen from her face as his eyes closed and his labored breathing slowed. Tears stood in eyes where no tears should be as the child grizzled and whined in the shadows.

"It is happy. But it is no ending."


End file.
